Stanford Social Innovation Review

The Changing Role of Nonprofits

Last night, I had the great opportunity to interview Clay Shirky, the author of Here Comes Everybody.  The first thing I asked about was his view of the new role of nonprofit organizations in the social media or technology revolution that is well underway.  I think it’s an interesting topic and wanted to continue the conversation here with you!  The topic is also featured as this month’s NetSquared Net2 Think Tank.

I asked Prof. Shirky specifically about the avenues of participation, content, and convening online.  Last month, my blog here on SSIR discussed the idea that nonprofit organizations, with the use of social media, can now create shared spaces online for their communities—truly convene groups online.  I still think this is one of the most dynamic opportunities that nonprofit organizations have now, providing a way to be more than a source, a service, or a membership.

Shirky points out in the video that nonprofits can’t participate online in the same way that individuals can.  I think this is a hard concept for many to agree with because of the process by which the social media tools are most often adopted in organizations:  for example, Jane really likes taking pictures and usually posts them to Flickr (an online photo sharing website) as a way to store them, sort them, and share them.  After taking some pictures at the local holiday parade, she finds that many others wanted to post their pictures on Flickr and started a group to pull them all together.  She posts her photos to the group and something clicks, “we could do this for our annual holiday event!”  Jane brings up the idea with her organization’s executives and they decide to give it a try, but only if Jane takes responsibility for implementation, monitoring, support, and so on. 

In that example, it would be difficult for Jane to really approach using Flickr from a different perspective than how she is already using it personally.  Why?  Because the difference isn’t in using the tools per se, we all have the same functionality to upload, tag, comment, etc.  But the important difference is all about the formation of connections, or relationships.

We have all heard before that social media is allowing a conversation to take place online: people are talking to each other, people are talking to organizations, organizations are talking to people, and so forth.  Well, those connections are really important, but not in a highest-friend-count kind of way.  It’s great for organizations to inspire hundreds or thousands of supporters to join their group, forum, network or whatever other opportunity that’s available.  What’s really great and exciting to see happen more and more across the web is organizations creating opportunities to connect members to members, and not just to the organization.

Here’s another example:  I may really support the League of Women Voters, could maybe find them online and join a network, but it would probably be nationally oriented or have chapter-specific relevancy that was still larger than me and my networks.  If the League of Women Voters could look at the network, see the kinds of opportunities present for members to connect with each other, and then provide the resources to connect (whether it is online tools, facilitating offline events, or just letting people know about each other) the ripple effects in the network could really create synergy amongst members and produce untapped enthusiasm for the organization.

Instead of thinking, “what can the relationships with members do for our organization?” or, “what can our relationships do for our members?” try thinking of this:

“What can the relationships between our members do for our community?”

So, perhaps the changing role of nonprofit organizations in the online space is not one of playing catch-up to the early adopters and hyper-connected individuals, nor is it one of “friending” big names or joining every platform; but is one of strategically convening supporters to create dynamic connections across the community.

What do you think?  Are there organizations that you think are doing this already and are doing it well?  Which organizations do you wish were doing this?  How do you think organizations can begin?

Amy Sample Ward’s passion for nonprofit technology has lead her to involvement with NTEN, NetSquared, and a host of other organizations. She shares many of her thoughts on nonprofit technology news and evolutions on her blog.

Posted by Kelsey Walker

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Online Community Building: Gardening vs Landscaping

My current job title includes the term “Community Builder” and I get asked nearly every day just what that means: how do you build community? where is the community you want to build? how can I be a community builder online? Tips, secrets, ideas?!  I want to take a break from all the hard work building community (does that get a wink?) to share some of what I believe is the core of successful community building (on or offline).

“Community building” is about a lot of things.  Some people define it as organizing, especially around specific events, campaigns, legislation, or fundraising.  Others see it as specifically applying to online community spaces, like a social networking site.  I believe that community exists everywhere, really.  That the Internet is a huge community of people looking to connect with others like them to form smaller, more specific communities.  Those of us in positions to support those connections and collaborations are some of the luckiest people in the global network, acting as the email or Twitter post or blog reference that helps individuals make networked jumps to where they really want to be.

Gardening vs Landscaping
So, what’s the secret to successful community building? You guessed it: be a great gardener and avoid the temptation to landscape.  Here’s what that means:

• A gardener only takes out the weeds; a landscaper takes out everything that isn’t part of the design.  Think about the number of beautiful plants or trees that have sprung up in parks, your yard, or even out in nature that weren’t “intended” to be there but quickly grew to be a valuable part of the ecosystem.
• A gardener isn’t afraid to mix things around; a landscaper plans and plots and plants.  Sometimes you can’t know ahead of time just which plants will respond well or want more sun or shade so you need to be flexible.
• When a storm hits, a gardener can remain open to planting anew and rejuvenating others; a landscaper may just order more of the same.  Sometimes it takes a storm to realize which plants just weren’t going to make it or which were able to stick it out.
• When in doubt, a gardener will try more plants or kinds of plants and see which take root; a landscaper may default to less.  What about the plants you had never used before to know about and how they took root, flowered, and bolted up right before your eyes?

Clearly, this is all very metaphorical here with the back yard options.  It is, though, meant to paint a picture:

The Gardener creates an ecosystem open to change, available to new groups, and full of fresh opportunities to emerge naturally.  The approach is focused on organic collaboration and growth for the entire community.  The gardener is simply there to help, cultivate, and clear the weeds if/when they poke up.

The Landscaper creates an ecosystem that matches a preconceived design or pattern.  The approach is focused on executing a preconceived environment, regardless of how natural or organic it may be for the larger area.  The landscaper is there to ensure that everything stays just as planned.

Your Community
How can you apply these ideas to your community building? The first question I always ask myself when considering a new tool or functionality online, a new project or campaign, or even new partnerships or members is: “Is this something the Community wants or something I want?”  It doesn’t matter what I want, really.  It matters what the Community wants.  And how do you know if or what they are interested in? ASK!  Be sure to always provide opportunities for your community members or those who come across your work to share their ideas about what they would like to see, how they’d like to connect with each other and how they would like to work with you.  And when considering anything new, ask for feedback and share your ideas and plans ahead of time.  You may be surprised, but your Community often has even better ideas than you!

What do you think? Do you have other ideas about successful community building? Have a great example or case study you want to share?  Looking forward to more!

Amy Sample Ward’s passion for nonprofit technology has lead her to involvement with NTEN, NetSquared, and a host of other organizations. She shares many of her thoughts on nonprofit technology news and evolutions on her blog.

 

 

Posted by Jason Chua

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Philanthropy Policy Project

The most recent complete review of regulations, policies and practices for the nonprofit sector (of which I am aware) was the 2005-2006 Panel on the Nonprofit Sector, hosted by Independent Sector, which produced a first report with 120 recommendations and a supplemental report a year later.

Since then we’ve seen the development of new reporting and ratings systems (GIIRS, IRIS), whole new “sectors” such as Social Capital, a steady increase in online giving, a rise in international giving flows, the expansion of two new organizational forms through state law - the low profit limited liability company (L3C) and the B Corporation and probably lots of other system-oriented innovations of which I am not aware.

We’ve also seen a boon in citizen participation in reading, informing, mashing up and making sense of government data and regulations as a result of The Sunlight Foundation, Data.gov, and Government2.0. The federal government is testing new community-driven mechanisms for awarding patents that involve citizen experts, requiring public access publication of NIH funded research, and is now proud home to a Chief Information Officer and a Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Open Government.

This is a perfect opportunity to invite nonprofit and philanthropy professionals, social entrepreneurs, social capital market makers, data wonks, think tanks and others to reimagine the regulatory and policy structures that guide and inform philanthropy.What policies or regulations would improve philanthropy? Here are some that are being discussed at Internet watercoolers (or even being debated in legislatures):

• Proposed new accounting rules for philanthropic equity, based on the proven success of work done by the Nonprofit Finance Fund.
• New requirements for foundations about racial and ethnic diversity, first proposed by the Greenlining Institute, defeated in California (AB 624) and then brought back to the national discussion by NCRP.
• Requirements for independent finance and investment structures to prevent the kinds of endowed asset losses that resulted from the massive Madoff Ponzi scheme.

I’d like to propose a Philanthropy Policy Project as a way of inviting new ways of thinking about the regulations and policies that guide the flow of capital to social good. I tend to try to simplify complex problems in order to get started, so I’d approach this by asking a couple of basic questions:

• What would better philanthropy look like? (Is it more money? More focused money? More democratized? More visible? Better informed? More accountable? More market-oriented? Less market-oriented?)
• What is likely to make those improvements happen?
• Are there policies or regulations that could accelerate or direct the change? (Based on the ideas already mentioned there are viable debates under way on accounting rules, governance structures, reporting requirements, and organizational options)
• What are those policies/regulations and at what level do they need to exist or be changed? (Who needs to be involved?)

If you have thoughts on any elements of this - the existing policies and regulations that guide philanthropy, the areas of policy that should be up for discussion, any of the proposals already on the table, or how to go about sparking this discussion in a meaningful, broad-based, and imaginative way, please let me know.

Lucy Bernholz is the founder and president of Blueprint Research & Design, Inc, a strategy consulting firm that helps philanthropic individuals and institutions achieve their missions. She is the publisher of Philanthropy2173, an award winning blog about the business of giving and serves as executive producer of The Giving Channel on Fora.tv.

Posted by Jason Chua

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The Clinton Global Initiative: Focus on Innovation

Innovation is now a field of practice—not just the result of random brainstorming, says Judith Rodin, the President of the Rockefeller Foundation. At one of the panels at this week’s Clinton Global Initiative in New York, Rodin cited three new ways that Internet technology is making innovation replicable and harvestable, spurring innovation that can be applied to social problem-solving. Rodin referred to what she called “user-driven” innovation and Net-powered “collaborative competition” and crowd-sourcing. User-driven innovation, she said, is about identifying practices that work and then replicating them throughout a community. Rodin shared a story of how this type of innovation was used recently to help tackle the problem of malnourishment in a Vietnamese village:

We found three or four incredibly well-nourished kids in a completely improvised village [in Asia] over the course of several days. In those few families, we found that the mothers didn’t wash out the few small shrimp and crabs that were in the rice paddies. Their children were the only kids in an otherwise carbohydrate-based diet that were getting some protein. Once we observed that user-driven innovation, we taught people throughout the village to follow this process, and that practice spread in Southeast Asia.

Crowd-sourcing also can help, Rodin said, citing a recent effort by InnoCentive, a company with a database of more than 175,000 of the brightest minds in science, engineering, technology and business, to develop a solar-based mosquito repellent. Rodin said the repellent ended up being less expensive than bed nets and more economical to produce. She said a company in Houston posted the challenge and a company in New Zealand solved the problem. It is being taken to scale in the Dmeocratic Republic of Congo. Explained Rodin:

The solution is a small cone shaped little instrument that had para-fin wax and human sweat that at the end of the day melted and absorbed heat. People who were using it wore sweatbands around their arms during the day and took them off at night and put them on a panel close to their beds. The combination of wristband and a water-based repellent gave the scent and moisture and heat level that felt like the human body.

Third, Rodin cited Ashoka, an organization that invests in social entrepreneurs worldwide, as a leader in “collaboration innovation.” She said Ashoka’s recent global water challenge asked people to compete for the best solution; competitors openly posted their suggestions so that others could build on their ideas and offer collaboration. The winning solution, she said, did not come from one individual but through the collaboration of 54 different companies. It is now being taken to scale with a $1 million grant from Coca-Cola.

An early morning panel on social innovation agreed that the world’s antiquated education system is broken: schools, panelists agreed, are celebrating old values and teaching mostly Industrial-Age skills rather than training tomorrow’s citizens how to be entrepreneurs, innovators and global problem-solvers. Bill Drayton, CEO and founder of Ashoka, told attendees: “The skills people need now are very different from what people are getting in our schools and education system. We have a diverging society where a small elite has mastered the competencies of empathy, teamwork, and entrepreneurship, but what happens to the 98 percent of the population who has not?” In 10-15 years, he said, “everyone will need to be a change-maker and an innovator.” “Companies”, he said, won’t be able to compete unless young people have been “trained for the revolutions we’ve been looking for.”

Drayton called on CEOs and government policymakers and social advocates to “change the definition of what schools are trying to do” by persuading a small, critical mass of people to create and then evangelize new alternatives. “There are 7-10 countries in the world that are so influential, that if you can tip them, you can tip the world,” he said. “If we can get, say, 2-3 percent of influential schools in Brazil or India to start teaching people to change the way our young people are being taught—and then get 15 or more intellectual leaders, scholars, trade union people, and journalists to get excited about it, then you can tip the system.” Imagine, he said, a society 10-15 years from now “in which all people who hit the age of 21 already know that when they see a problem, they can do something about it.” Kathleen Eisenhardt, an engineering professor at Stanford University, agreed but cautioned that not everyone will, nor can be, a change-maker. “If everybody is change-making,” she said, “then companies won’t be able to scale.”

Marcia Stepanek is Founding Editor-in-Chief and President, News and Information, for Contribute Media, a New York-based magazine, Web site, and conference series about the new people and ideas of giving. She is the publisher of Cause Global, an acclaimed new blog about the use of digital media for social change. She also serves as moderator and producer of New Conversations for Change, Contribute’s forum series highlighting social entrepreneurs and new trends in philanthropy.

Posted by Jason Chua

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#4 Change Examines Social Media for the Climate Change Movement

How can we and how are we using social media tools for social change? That’s the question that the monthly #4Change chats (that take place on Twitter) address, this month focusing on the Climate Change movement.  This was a very lively conversation, filled with examples and experiences from people involved in climate change organizations and campaigns leveraging social media in their work.  “Social media is all about moving people up the ladder of engagement” (@JeffM2001) and is designed “to inspire (and to have lasting effect)—build fields and bridges, not brands” (@tropology). These points and the full #4Change conversation are applicable to the Climate Change movement, but also to many social impact sectors and the campaigns reaching around the world.

So, what are the biggest lessons for using social media in a global movement?

There were three main lessons or focus areas that emerged in the discussion.  These three lessons focus on what is successful, unique or important about using social media for the Climate Change movement (or any social impact area).  Note: the @names provide links to the Twitter users who made specific comments, just in case you want to connect and continue the conversation!*

Lesson #1: Voice

“Social media is a storytelling tool, it’s let voices effected by climate change be heard around the world” (@amysampleward).  Many social media tools are specifically designed for users to tell stories and voice opinions, others are built as aggregators and distributors of users’ stories.  Think about a tool like YouTube, where people can share videos (uploaded and created in various ways from mobile phones to laptop computers to high quality cameras) and then find others who care about similar issues.  It is impossible to tell a story about someone else being affected by Climate Change as well as the authentic voice of the person who is living with Climate Change.

“I’m really interested in how people are starting & joining movements - and how they’re growing via people-powered social media!” (@engagejoe)

The power of social media and the authentic storytelling that takes place is in the opportunity for people to inspire other people to take action, which leads to lesson #2.

Lesson #2: Action

@HildyGottlieb asked a great question, “How many ppl think that by “following” a climate change guru, they’re creating change?” Her question spurred some interesting comments that targeting the idea of taking action.  Social media is still the tool or the medium, not the change or the action.  The challenge, then, is how to use the tools to effect change, “not just talk about change we want to see one day” (@replyforall).  The power of social media in this context, “is in networks growing and collaborating, not silo-ing” (@amysampleward) or “connecting/leveraging/magnifying the work of people who’re already aware” (@HildyGottlieb).

Another side of empowering action via social media is to focus on what hooks people in: “Social Media can only inspire ACTION when people EASILY see how their action a) is part of something bigger, b) makes a difference” (@SethHorwitz).  “People need choices of action, if they are listening to you they are more than likely interested in your cause / initiative” (@BeverleyPomeroy) so provide opportunities to take action; your supporters are ready!  As, @@JeffM2001 explains, “awareness of climate change is already very high, we need to raise awareness about what we can do about it.”

Lesson #3: Local vs Global

The final focus area is on the local vs global impact of social media.  With tools that let us connect in real-time to anywhere else in the world, it can be hard for us to streamline, focus, or even tell our stories in ways that makes sense to the audience.  It especially poses problems for campaigners looking to collaborate around the world and create meaningful opportunities to take action (someone in Taiwan may have a compelling story about Climate Change, but they may not respond or be empowered by a US legislative petition, for example).

“Real world movement needs to allow 3rd world (biggest victims) to take leadership” (@SethHorwitz.)  “The accumulation of climate conscious communities will slowly add to a big pay off. People don’t see ‘big picture’ but relate locally” (@kristianakocis).

The local issue also takes the shape of real people, connecting in person.  “Social Media can’t be a replacement for getting one-on-one commitments from people—we need faces in the movement, not Facebook newsfeeds” (@replyforall).  Linking in global messages or large-scale campaigns to “to offline events and opportunities across organizations/campaigns” (@amysampleward) can bring local communities into the mix and create more ownership for outcomes.

Examples of Social Media

There were many, many examples cited in the discussion.  Please follow the links to learn more as I’ve tried to pull out as many as I could:

• There are many organizations using Twitter to promote actions, including: @350 @1sky @tcktcktck @replyforall @avaaz @PowerShift09 @wiserearth @focusthenation @consequence09
• Collaborative mapping of climate change policy http://bit.ly/1Jol4U
• http://climatelab.org is a climate change wiki
• http://consequence09.org/TimeToLead
• CoP15 Global Observatory worth a look http://globalobservatory.net
• http://climatecamp.tv
• Kinda technical, but for any nerds the drupal.org profile of TckTckTck is worth a look http://drupal.org/node/585950
• #Dreamact -ers have expanded the role of SM, not just to stay connected, but informing supporters on how to use SM themselves
• 1 way social media inspires action is by making it really easy, e.g. http://consequence09.org/call
• Pinc is using http://bit.ly/18nurm 2 inspire & inform, evoke w/ built in actions other platforms do similar w/ their applications
• Climate Ntwks, @1sky @powershift09 @focusthenation & @consequence09 each have own branded window into same 435 groups

Learn more about #4Change or review the full transcript.

*For transparency: I am @amysampleward in the above chat.

Amy Sample Ward’s passion for nonprofit technology has lead her to involvement with NTEN, NetSquared, and a host of other organizations. She shares many of her thoughts on nonprofit technology news and evolutions on her blog.

 

Posted by Jason Chua

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Swarm

Back in July, Mark Pesce predicted increasing dust-ups between traditional companies and organizations versus self-organized “cause mobs” wielding social and mobile media tools to make change. His prediction, so far, has been right on the mark. As I write Swarms, a book about self-organized groups that mobilize for impact, I’m tracking the emergence of increasingly aggressive online communities; such examples point to a growing trend that intersects social advocacy and corporate communities. Many swarms continue to get stronger as they mobilize for causes. [The just-finished online EVERYWHERE campaign to fight cancer reported today that it raised a record $70,000 in 24 hours]. But what’s new is that swarms are now starting to take on businesses with increasing frequency, with organizers using their passionate crowds of “friends and followers” to help them force their well-funded adversaries to back down.

Here are some recent examples of the power-shift in the commercial space:

• On October 2, Nestle was forced to drop its decision to source milk from a dairy owned by the wife of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, thanks to a Facebook organized campaign that protested Mugabe’s violent seizure of the operation from a white farmer. Nestle relented after several protest groups were set up on Facebook to boycott Nestle products; one flash mob listed more than 8,000 members. Kallie Kriel, the chief executive of AfriForum, a rights group which had called for a boycott of what she called Nestle’s “blood milk” told the Associated Press: “This shows the strength that civil society has; this action shows that civil society can use these tools to make sure justice prevails.”
• Reacting to what they considered a homophobic column in the Daily Mail by writer Jan Moir, an online flash mob waged a high-profile protest campaign against the British tabloid, causing major firms such as Marks & Spencer to remove their ads from the Web page that carried Moir’s piece. The article questioned the circumstances leading to the death of Boyzone star Stephen Gately; more than 1,000 emails and calls alleging homophobia and inaccuracies in Moir’s article were filed with the Press Complaints Division, causing the Web site to crash. Protesters set up a Facebook page called, “The Daily Mail Should Retract Jan Moir’s Hateful, Homophobic Article” and listed the names and telephone numbers of the paper’s key advertisers. An article about the flap in the Guardian, a rival newspaper, quoted James Bromley, the Mail’s Online managing director, saying his decision to agree to remove the ads was made after the paper “saw the strong reaction.”
• Last month, the makers of Monster, an energy drink, sent a cease and desist letter to Rock Art Brewery in Vermont, a small craft brewery with 7 employees. Rock Art calls one of its specialty beers “Vermonster” but the makers of Monster—the Corona, Calif.-based Hansen Beverage Co.—think it’s too similar in name to Monster, Hansen’s energy drink. Hansen is trying to force Rock Art to stop using the Vermonster name. But Rock Art’s owner, Matt Nadeau, is having none of it. Nadeau is using his company’s Web site, Facebook page, Twitter account and now a YouTube video to rally support for a boycott against Monster called “Rock Art Brewery vs. Corporate America.”  So far, so good: Nadeau’s Facebook group, the Vermonters and Craft Beer Drinkers Against Monster, has amassed more than 10,000 members. Twitter users have begun using the hashtags #boycottmonster and #monsterboycott to keep mobilizing on Twitter. According to a Mashable post by Adam Ostrow, Nadeau says he won’t quit until he gets Monster to back down: Nadeau says he has no money to fight Monster in court, so he’s pushing hard for a swarm boycott instead. Will it work? Nadeau says many Vermont store owners have joined Nadeau’s boycott: one, George Bergin, told the AP that he has taken Hansen and Monster products off his shelves and is telling customers why, even though Monster is the store’s best-selling energy drink.

There’s no doubt: consumers have always been able to organize. But thanks to the speed and reach of the Net, look for more such fast-fire boycotts going forward.
Many of these new groups have been getting results, but there’s another reason they’re catching on so quickly, says Sherri Grasmuck, a sociologist at Temple University. She says Facebook users tend to shape their online identities implicitly rather than explicitly. As in the offline world, the kinds of campaigns and groups Web users join, she says, reveal more about who they are than their dull “about me” pages.

For more on Swarms, see this earlier post on Cause Global, and another piece on “network weaving”— an expanding body of knowledge about how organizations, communities, regions, industries, marketers and geopolitics behave as networks of collaboration, learning and influence.

Got a swarm story you’d like to share? Let us hear from you and we’ll credit you for your contribution in a later post on the subject.

Marcia Stepanek is Founding Editor-in-Chief and President, News and Information, for Contribute Media, a New York-based magazine, Web site, and conference series about the new people and ideas of giving. She is the publisher of Cause Global, an acclaimed new blog about the use of digital media for social change. She also serves as moderator and producer of New Conversations for Change, Contribute’s forum series highlighting social entrepreneurs and new trends in philanthropy.

Posted by Jason Chua

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America, Reimagined

PopTech, the vaunted thoughtfest that annually gathers some of the world’s leading social innovators in the coastal hamlet of Camden, Maine, just wrapped up its 2009 conference after mulling an uncharacteristically, un-global theme: America and the challenges it faces domestically in the early years of this new century.

Called America Reimagined, the conference featured more than 50 artists, writers, musicians, technologists, and social entrepreneurs—all of whom are creating or leading bold new civic, economic, technological and cultural initiatives in the United States. The sessions were designed to explore how major forces are reshaping the idea of America, its government’s contract with its citizens, its brand, and its role in the world. “The thing about the kinds of moments we are living in right now is that they are often filled with conflicting and confusing signals,” conference curator Andrew Zolli said in opening remarks.” Is it possible for us as a country, economically and technologically, politically and culturally, to reinvent ourselves?”

Radio host Kurt Andersen, the author of Reset, a book about America’s uncertain future, was the first to consider the question, describing the last 25 years of American life as years in which Americans have been “guilty of magical thinking.”

We took Peter Pan too seriously; we took Bob Dylan’s lyrics too seriously.  We committed to never growing up and we didn’t. I mean, when did adults start celebrating Halloween? When did people over 12 begin eating ice cream with mashed up cookie dough in it? When did adults start wearing blue jeans and sneakers all the time and watching cartoons? Most decades end after a decade, but the 1980s—until last year’s financial meltdown—just kept going, and kept going, and kept going.

The point: America has always moved back and forth between economic booms and busts and between the right and left politically. But this moment in time is different, Andersen says. “It’s a time when all of these cycles are shifting dramatically and simultaneously; when complacency is forced to end; when outdated structures are being inevitably and necessarily challenged, and when change is rapid and difficult to predict.”

But Andersen, like many of PopTech’s other speakers, was optimistic. Andersen said the current economic crisis “is actually a great opportunity for reinvention and for getting ourselves as individuals and as a nation back on track.” If reinvention is to occur, however, it will be catalyzed not by today’s present leaders as much as by the amateurs in society, young people and “new-thinking baby boomers” in the grassroots—people unafraid to take risks, think creatively, and see the world through the lens of possibility.

“This isn’t the end of the world,” Andersen said. “But the ‘80s are over. I’d like to think we’re just waking up.”

Among other highlights so far:

• Alec Ross, a senior social media/technology adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, told conferees about the ion’s 21st Century Statecraft initiative, uses social media to help nations and leaders empower their citizens and each other. “If you think of the last eight years of American foreign policy, it was about overpowering others in the world,” Ross said. “[We want] to go beyond engaging government-to-government and to connect with people more directly.  If Paul Revere were alive today, he wouldn’t make a ride; he would have just tweeted and the lantern hangers would’ve retweeted.” Ross said he is launching a new social media initiative with Mexican drug-trafficking authorities that aims to engage citizens in their war on drugs.  He described that one of the biggest problems in this conflict is that people fear retaliation if they help out law enforcement.  “So I went [to Mexico]…and we met with NGOs and with Carlos Slim and we came up with a little system where people are able to email or text gang activity.” The system anonymizes their emails to prevent retaliation, and the government can use these tips to respond more quickly, and keep people informed about what’s happening in their anti-drug efforts. “This is just Chapter One of how we can use technology in statecraft.”
• James Fowler, the author of the recent book, Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, told conferees that humans—like birds and schools of fish—also tend to act in communities of purpose and suggested that online social networks will amplify these natural social tendencies. Humans have always lived in “webs of humanity,” Fowler said, and within these Webs, such physical traits as obesity and behaviors such as smoking tend to spread like viruses. In other words, there is a kind of swarm mentality in social networks, and those people closest to us can affect our behaviors more than we might like to admit. But there is an upside.  When individuals engage in positive behavior, this also can have a ripple effect on the actions of those of their social networks.  “I recently lost five pounds,” Fowler said, “to influence those I loves to do the same. Just think about it, by changing your own behavior, you truly can change the behavior of others.” Social media can help humans influence their communities and have a large positive impact on the world.
• Erica Williams, a 20-something Washington, D.C.-based activist working to help broaden the civic engagement of her peers, urged the older PopTech crowd to put away their stereotypes of her generation. “Call us what you will, the MTV generation, Millennials, the ‘us’ generation,” she said, “but we are not bored or disinterested; our world view is different.” At some 300 million strong, she added, today’s 18-27 year olds “have the opportunity to re-brand civic engagement” and reinvent politics. “My generation doesn’t like traditional politics,” she told conferees. “We are the most ethnically diverse generation that America has ever had. We are post-racial. We came up at a time with 9-11, fighting two wars and a gap between the haves and have-nots that we haven’t seen since the Gilded Age—and a “me” generation that was many of our parents. So we distrust ‘politics as usual.’ It hasn’t worked.”  In the absence of top-down reform, Williams said her generation will always work beyond traditional avenues to get things done, bypassing candidates who don’t deliver, and mobilizing young people directly. “We are re-branding what it means to be politically engaged,” she said.
• Malaysian singer/songwriter Zee Avi, discovered on Twitter, performed several songs she wrote, her fresh lyrics and full-sounding acoustic guitar underscoring the influence that American popular culture has had on the rest of the world. At one point during her performance, PopTech attendee and Personal Democracy Forum cofounder Micah Sifry, tweeted favorably: “Zee Avi, Malaysian singer, sounds like she’s from Northampton, Mass. Is world getting too small?”

Marcia Stepanek is Founding Editor-in-Chief and President, News and Information, for Contribute Media, a New York-based magazine, Web site, and conference series about the new people and ideas of giving. She is the publisher of Cause Global, an acclaimed new blog about the use of digital media for social change. She also serves as moderator and producer of New Conversations for Change, Contribute’s forum series highlighting social entrepreneurs and new trends in philanthropy.

Posted by Jason Chua

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Causes: Causing a Stir for Social Impact

A recent event has brought up some huge red flags for me around data, around communities, around social impact, inclusion and even more.  It’s a case of letting technology lead (or, rather, the people behind the technology) instead of the communities on the other end.  This event focuses on Causes, an application for supporting and fundraising for organizations by individuals, groups and even the organizations themselves.

First, let me explain what happened yesterday.  Administrators of Causes accounts on MySpace received a notice via email stating, “Thank you for the work you’ve done on Causes on MySpace.  Due to the lack of activity on MySpace, we’ve decided to focus our efforts on the Causes Application on Facebook.”  (To read the full message, click here.)  The message indicated that all Causes-related pages and content on MySpace would be taken down at the end of the week.

This may not seem too terribly interesting or scary, but let’s take a closer look.

What it Means to Individuals

I blogged earlier this year about research that indicates very strongly we’ve replicated our offline social barriers and segmentation in our online social networking platforms.  (Visit danah boyd’s website for more information and research on this topic.) Different communities have aligned and adopted different social networks, social media tools, communications platforms, etc. The tools we use often reflect the communities we are in, whether those communities are geographic, ethnic, or otherwise.

I consistently advocate that organizations go where their community is—because that community is already connected and people are already talking about you, your services or your sector.  Why? Because individuals network together online and the biggest influencers are our closest friends in our network.  When a friend starts a campaign, supports or fundraises for an organization or cause publicly on a social networking platform, they broadcast that action and encourage their friends to do the same.

Causes leaving MySpace means that no users there (though, there certainly seem to be A LOT of users) will be able to continue promoting the causes, organizations or sectors that they care about via a process that’s already been established, adopted, and networked.  I’ve even talked before about how I believe Millennials are using alignment and promotion of social impact areas (whether it’s a sector, like Human Rights; or a nonprofit, like Planned Parenthood; etc.) as a form of self expression and identification.  Applications like Causes also enable individuals to give voices to your work that you don’t have to control or manage - campaigns that benefit you because your supporters believe and appreciate the work you are doing.  (Check out a great post from Ivan Boothe of Rootwork on this topic.)

In a big way, removing the Causes application from MySpace will mean many people don’t have the “space” to bare their badges of support, to leverage a networked dashboard of lapel pins that align them and define them.

What it Means to Communities

Causes’ About statement says, “The goal of all this is what we call “equal opportunity activism.” We’re trying to level the playing field by empowering individuals to change the world.”

The debate around social media and the Internet in general as a leveling force is still heated from all sides.  Yes you can claim that anyone has the power to blog, but that’s really only the people who have access to the tools and the time and the empowerment.  The access debate aside, the removal of Causes from MySpace where there are active communities of supporters means “equal opportunity activism” is defined by only certain communities (as we know that social networking platforms have very different demographic user groups).

It also skews the idea that organizations can focus energy where their communities already are.  Though, with MySpace, organizations have different opportunities for creating profiles and interacting with supporters than on Facebook.

Looking Ahead

Causes has yet to post anything about this on their blog and the MySpace option is still prominently displayed next to Facebook at the top of the site. Obviously, there are many questions users, administrators and communities would like answered.  For example, what will happen to the content, the communications, the information?  Will organizations or administrators still be able to connect with or communicate with their list of supporters? And so on.

But there are many other, larger, questions this example raises for me:

• Is this an indication that communities will have to take the lead of technologies (and the people behind them)?
• How can communities communicate and demand technologies take the lead from them?
• How are organizations building community online in a way that safe guards them from third-parties (maintaining the connections to supporters on MySpace that were gained via Causes by inviting users to register directly with the organization as well, etc.)?
• What will be the requirement in an open data or open web for applications serving communities?
• How do we, as public thinkers about this “stuff,” help guide organizations in navigating these questions and others?

What do you think?

I can’t wait to hear what you think! Are you using Causes on MySpace, are you using it on Facebook? Do you have ideas or feelings about the questions above? What other questions do you want answered?

Amy Sample Ward’s passion for nonprofit technology has lead her to involvement with NTEN, NetSquared, and a host of other organizations. She shares many of her thoughts on nonprofit technology news and evolutions on her blog.

Posted by Jason Chua

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Stop What You Are Doing Right Now and Donate to Idealist.org

How did you find your first nonprofit job?

For many of us, there’s only one answer to that question: Idealist.org. Like many of you, I found my very first full-time nonprofit job on their website. And it was the perfect job for me in the beginning of my nonprofit career. I remember it like it was yesterday…

I had recently graduated from college with a Bachelor’s degree in English that people said would never make me any money. They were partly right. I had already been working in the nonprofit field for almost three years on a volunteer or part-time basis for very little pay. I had no idea whether I could even find a full-time job that wouldn’t leave me homeless since the luxury of financial aid was long gone. My apprehension was heightened because I had also chosen to relocate from Richmond, Virginia, where I went to school – to Washington, DC, where all the nonprofits were, according to my professors. I had no friends in DC and no money. All I knew was that I wanted a job in the nonprofit sector.

My first attempt had been to go through a temp agency where I landed a great administrative position at the United Way, but it just wasn’t the perfect fit for me. So, I left after just a few months. I continued my search for the perfect nonprofit position. But, in the meantime, I needed money. I had an expensive apartment on the outskirts of DC. So, then I did a six-month stint at a District Court in Virginia as a Deputy Clerk. I figured I could put my minor in pre-law to use. The job sounded fancy, but all it meant was that I was supposed to process all the paperwork to keep the bad guys in jail. It was good money for me at the time, plus I had benefits. I’d never had a job with benefits before. But, then I started to get into trouble. People were being charged with crimes they couldn’t even understand because they couldn’t speak English. So, I spent my time running around trying to get them interpreters. I thought it was fair. I thought it was how the justice system should work. But apparently, that wasn’t my job. My job was not to help people have a fair trial. It was to process them and make sure they got into the right jail.

That’s when I knew I could never work in the legal system. Especially for the bureaucratic government. Eventually my boss at the District Court gave me two weeks to either shape up or ship out. I said my goodbyes, then went online and started applying for nonprofit jobs on Idealist.org. I don’t even remember how I found out about Idealist. Maybe from one of my professors. Maybe through a simple Google search. What happened next is that I found an open position with an organization in DC that worked with youth-serving organizations in communities of color, specifically the Black community. I had volunteered with African American youth in college. I cared deeply about people of color and how nonprofits could serve us. This was perfect for me. I can’t tell you how badly I wanted this job. They didn’t even call me until a month after I had applied! All of a sudden, I had an interview with them at 2:00pm. I got lost on the way there because I still hadn’t figured out the DC Metro system. I was late. I thought I’d blown it. I thought I’d have to go crawling back to the District Court. But then they called to offer me the job at 5:00pm that same day. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Thank you Idealist.org for connecting me with my perfect nonprofit job. It started me on a path to even more connections and even more opportunities to contribute to my community through nonprofit work. That’s why I opened my wallet and made a donation this morning. If not for the great folks that put the Idealist website together, that maintain the content, that run the organization – those career connections could not have happened for me. I know that many of you have similar stories. And I hope you will share them in the comments!

In the meantime, here are several reasons why you should open your wallet and donate, too:

If you’ve ever found a nonprofit opportunity through Idealist – job, volunteer, board:
http://www.idealist.org/donate

If you’re currently looking for a nonprofit job:
http://www.idealist.org/donate

If your organization has hired or plans to hire an awesome new nonprofit employee:
http://www.idealist.org/donate

If you can’t imagine who or what could possibly take the place of Idealist:
http://www.idealist.org/donate

Please also share Ami Dar’s note below with your friends, especially all of your friends who have benefited from this amazing organization. This is one of those times where we may only have one chance to help save one of the cornerstones of the nonprofit sector. When I talk to young people, they always mention Idealist.org as the way they connected to the nonprofit field. And we desperately need these new leaders to continue coming into our organizations and breathing new life into the work of social change. We can’t let Idealist go down like this. We need them. And now, they need us.

Dear Friend,

You know how sometimes in life you go through a bad moment, and when
your friends hear about it later, they say, “Why didn’t you say
something? Why didn’t you ask? We would have helped.”

That’s where Idealist is now, and I am writing to ask for your help.

Very briefly, here’s what happened. Over the past ten years, most of
our funding has come from the small fees we charge organizations for
posting their jobs on Idealist. By September 2008, after years of
steady growth, these little drops were covering 70% of our budget.

Then, in October of that year, the financial crisis exploded, many
organizations understandably froze their hiring, and from one week to
the next our earned income was cut almost in half, leaving us with a
hole of more than $100,000 each month.

That was 16 months ago, and since then we’ve survived on faith and
fumes, by cutting expenses, and by getting a few large gifts from new
and old friends. But now we are about to hit a wall, and this is why I
am reaching out to you.

If over the past 15 years Idealist has helped you or a friend find a
job, an internship or a volunteer opportunity; connect with a person,
an idea or a resource; or just feel inspired for a moment, now we need
your help. I wouldn’t be asking, and not like this, if this were not a
critical time.

There are two ways you can help. First, if you can, please make a
donation at:

http://www.idealist.org/donate

Some people in this community are not in a position to contribute
right now, so if you are, please give as generously as you can. Thank you!

Second, please spread the word about this appeal by sharing this
message with friends and colleagues who may have benefited from
Idealist over the years. Since 1995 Idealist has touched hundreds of
thousands of lives. If in the next week or two we can reach everyone
who’d give us a hand if they knew we are in trouble, I believe we’ll
come out of this crisis even stronger than before.

I believe this because while this has been a tough stretch, I’ve never
been more optimistic about the future. The content on Idealist has
never been richer, our traffic is surging, we are building a whole new
Idealist.org that will be released later this year, and the potential
for connecting people, ideas, and resources around the world has never
been more urgent or more exciting.

Your contribution will allow us to maintain all our services
(summarized below), and it will also give us some time to diversify
our funding. Being able to breathe, recover, and plan ahead for a few
months will be an incredible blessing.

Thanks so much for your support. Idealist has always been a
community-driven site, and we can’t do this work without you.

Thank you!

Ami Dar
Executive Director
http://www.idealist.org/donate

Rosetta Thurman is a writer, speaker, professor and consultant working and living in the Washington, D.C. area.  She holds a Master’s degree in Nonprofit Management and blogs about nonprofits, leadership and social change at rosettathurman.com

Posted by Samantha Penabad

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The First Social Movement Plan Competition

Would Martin Luther King Jr, Cesar Chavez or Mahatma Gandhi have entered a prize-driven competition for their respective causes?  Would their movements have been even more effective with the aid of the Internet and its social tools?

We’ll never know for sure, but we do know that many social movement organizations and grassroots organizers alike are starting to embrace the wild wild west of ‘e-organizing’: a landscape of new web-based tools and technologies designed to help self-organize large numbers of people and drive systemic change.

As you might have read recently in a SSIR email sent out to all magazine subscribers, Stanford students recently unveiled the first ever Movement Plan Competition.  This first year, this “Social-M Challenge” (‘M’ for Movement) is thematically focused on environmental sustainability and powered online by Blitz Bazaar, a new movement-management platform that makes it very easy for grassroots organizers to harness the power of the social web to start and grow a micro-movement, even for people with little comfort using the social web.  Full disclosure: I am the founder of Blitz Bazaar. 

Phase I of the challenge closed on January 29th with eighteen submitted movement plans, the best of which were awarded $1000 each. Now through February 27th, movement leaders will nurture and adjust their movements to the realities and lessons of campaigning.  The single best-realized and most-promising of the thirteen active social movements will be awarded $10,000. Challenge funding was generously provided by the following Stanford partner organizations: the Precourt Energy Efficiency Center, the Sustainable Stanford Green Fund, the Woods Institute for the Environment, the Office of Community Engagement and the School of Humanities and Sciences. 

If you check out the site, you’ll see PhDs, professors and undergrad freshman all taking collective action for the sustainability-related causes.  These are micro-movements that promote issues like vegetarianism, community supported agriculture (a.k.a, eat local food), ‘Green’ values for young children, reusable utensils, ending food waste, oil-free water in Ecuador and more.  Each movement is working towards a very specific goal and lists actions anybody can take to help further the goal.  Again, the movements are not limited to Stanford students so anybody can get involved.

In a new era defined by disruptive new social technologies and a market-driven approach to social change, it is not surprising that social movement-making be similarly incentivized.  Grassroots organizers can also be motivated using the same successful format that we’ve now gotten used to for business plans and more recently the X-prize foundation.  However, this value of this type of competition goes well beyond just catalyzing social movements and therefore social change. Anybody who’s participated in the more familiar business plan competitions in the past knows that it’s less about the money and more about the process. 

Our partners at Stanford, The Precourt Institute, The Woods Institute, and the Stanford Office of Sustainability, have been pleased with the Challenge so far for a couple reasons.  First it embodies the transdisciplinary approach the University is trying to advocate.  Doctors working with engineers, MBAs and lawyers to solve the healthcare debacle makes a lot of sense but it is hard to make happen in practice.  Secondly, Social-M is seen as a valuable tool for experiential learning in an ever-more important but largely ignored discipline: campaigning.  Lastly, it is technologically innovative by incorporating social networking and social media into the loop via Blitz Bazaar.

Contingent on successful results gleamed from this Stanford’s Social-M Challenge, you can expect this “Movement Plan Competition” format to spread just like the ‘social’ business plan competition format has proliferated in the last decade.  Many more Universities and Social Movement organizations are likely to embrace this format as an effective way to teach and catalyze the discipline of movement-making, a.k.a. campaigning.

Lloyd Nimetz is the founder of Blitz Bazaar, a web-platform for grassroots organizers to more effectively manage and grow their movements and social campaigns.  He founded the online giving market HelpArgentina.org. He has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, a BA from Williams College and was a Fulbright Scholar to Argentina.

Posted by Samantha Penabad

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Mobile: Increasingly on Call

On February 20, Harvard Business School (HBS) hosted its eleventh annual “Africa Business Conference,” a collection of high-profile discussions, many of which focused on the centrality of telecommunications, mobile banking, and new media in African development.  On February 27, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) held its “Policy Making in a Digital World” conference featuring luminaries such as Jonathan Zittrain, co-Founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, panelists from the U.S. Department of State, and innovators from new platforms such as Ushahidi that enable crowd-sourced crisis mapping via SMS, and were instrumental to saving lives in Haiti.

Topics ranged from private equity in Africa to crisis response, but the commonality across both events for managers and innovators focused on international development was that new technology –open-source but coordinated and non-redundant, crowd-sourced platforms– is central to progress.  That high mobile penetration makes it the platform of choice is no novel news.  However, such conferences shed light on the empirics of how firms are innovating today, and raise important issues such as the fact that poor coverage and mobile promotions from competing networks impel many in Africa to own more than one phone, eroding the presumed mobile penetration associated with a number like 4 billion cell phones.

As I highlight in a Yale Journal of International Affairs article entitled, “Bringing Africa Online: Leveraging Technology to Empower Entrepreneurs,”, there are a number of challenges today.  The HBS conference focused on one such issue in that current transaction platforms insufficiently enable informed African consumers to access global retail outlets, and preclude entrepreneurs from providing goods on the world stage.  Online payment platforms limit access to many in emerging markets, and this impacts both consumers who want access to global providers, and retailers who cannot accept payments, and cannot fully leverage international promotion online. 

Peter Ojo, CEO of Virtual Terminal Network (VTN), described how his service empowers Nigerian consumers by enabling GSM mobile transactions from all 36 states.  Nigerian businesses can utilize VTN to accept mobile payments from consumers, and over 3,000 Nigerian businesses have adopted this platform.  Whereas PayPal and Google Checkout are cumbersome and ineffective on the continent due to legal and payment restrictions, VTN streamlines transaction costs for Nigerian businesses while concurrently offering access to domestic consumers.  Cost savings can inspire profit re-investment, leading to growth and employment.

As mobile is still the device of choice in Africa, mobile banking and mobile payment facilitation is a natural extension to what VTN offers in Nigeria.  While lacking the patina of fellow HBS panelists, young Benjamin Lyon, Executive Director of Frontline SMS, discussed his innovative company that facilitates institutional mobile transaction capabilities.  Frontline SMS is focused on helping provide back-end infrastructure that enables microfinance institutions to manage the logistics of frequent and voluminous inflow of mobile payments. 

At Columbia University SIPA, Ushahidi Director of Crisis Mapping and Strategic Partnerships, Patrick Meier, spoke on the groundbreaking humanitarian management applications for crowd-sourced mobile response.  Ushahidi, which means “witness” or “testimony” in Swahili, is a Kenyan organization supported by the Omidyar Network that focuses on crowd-sourced crisis mapping.  Following the earthquake in Haiti, Ushahidi –a network of volunteers who had undergone brief training– scoured a diverse array of media, from YouTube, UN reports, local radio in Creole and French, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr to collect instant on-the-ground information from Haiti, map, tag, and geo-code it with GPS coordinates for immediate search and rescue application.  Whereas official mobilization took days, technology mobilization took hours, and within a week Ushahidi had been featured on CNN, referenced by Secretary of State Clinton, and thanked from the decks of a US Aircraft Carrier, by Marine commanders, and aid volunteers.

Meier stressed coordinated open-source development, wherein creation can happen without proprietary impediment, but wherein duplication is minimized, improving the consolidation of actionable information.  He stressed real-time, visual presentation of information, and audience-attuned presentation.  In the case of crisis response, GPS coordinates drive how teams are dispatched and lives saved.

On October 1-3, 2010 the International Conference on Crisis Mapping, focused on “Haiti, Chile and Beyond” will take place in Boston, Massachusetts, and will seek to expand on platforms that crowd-source local information via SMS, and relay actionable “tagged” information in real-time, GPS geo-coded maps.  A demand-driven, volunteer network of organizations, the conference will be a call for input.

Whether in expanding financial services access to the un-banked in Africa, improving access to payments platforms to enable consumers and entrepreneurs seeking global online markets, or responding to crisis, mobile is on call.  Many-to-many platforms that are developed open-source, and made available to all with the caveats of coordination, can continue to build upon crowd-source local knowledge.  Repackaged in intuitive, actionable ways, its rapid response availability and ease of use will ultimately necessitate its adoption for pragmatists and humanists, a statement that was evident at Harvard and Columbia, and now echoed at Stanford. 

Scott E. Hartley (Stanford, ’05) is a former Google.org Business Development Consultant and dual-degree MIA/MBA graduate student at Columbia University School of International & Public Affairs and Columbia Business School.  He writes on Internet & Democracy for the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

Posted by Samantha Penabad

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