SOPA + PIPA? What does it mean?
01/18 2012 Posted in Info Tech | 0 comments
A special guest post from Ehren Foss, CEO of HelpAttack!
In terms of demonstrating the power of online communities to have an
impact in the very offline process of legislation, today is an amazing
day. Wikipedia, Google, and many other sites are putting the SOPA
and PIPA legislation, and their opposition to it, front and center,
and individuals are responding strongly as well. What could be wrong?
Even if these bills are defeated, they will return, and they will
never be perfect. We need great, expert organizations with effective
tactics to have the resources to continue their work. Did you change
your Twitter avatar? Great! Did you black out your website, no
matter how small? Wonderful! It’s time to do more.
Please donate to one of these organizations, of one of your choosing,
right now. The sooner the funds reach them, the sooner they will have
the resources to do more positive things that we can’t do while
looking at our computer screens, changing our Twitter pictures, or
adding Javascript to our sites.
Electronic Frontier Foundation: https://supporters.eff.org/donate
American Civil Liberties Union: http://action.aclu.org/
Sunlight Foundation: http://sunlightfoundation.com/donate/
Open Congress: http://www.opencongress.org/donate
AFTER you’ve done that, please consider sustaining your support by
creating an ongoing HelpAttack! pledge like this one.
Are you seeing Invisible Dogs?
10/3 2011 Posted in Info Tech | 0 comments
Well I want you to! As many of you know I have been doing some work for Best Friends Animal Society (@BFAS) around Digital Strategy and creating online movements to solve social issues. Our newest digital movement is “The Invisible Dogs Campaign“(#InvisibleDogs). We are starting with the smile that comes to people’s faces when they see the iconic “invisible dog” leash from the 80′s and 90′s, and turning that into a real message about adopting dogs lost in the shelters system. These “invisible dogs” are often found in city shelters, forgotten about by most people and rescue groups and facing tremendous odds to get adopted.
Our whole digital movement is to make these “invisible dogs” visible for people in generation X and Y. We are using everything from traditional social media, check-ins, self organized meet-ups to online video advertising to create something beyond a campaign to save these animals. Our most interesting push so far is using User Generated Content to identify dogs that need help (As seen here using people’s mobile phones) and working with FourSquare on a National Shelter Check In Day in November. The content, conversations and online social sharing tsunami generated by this digital movement will help us save thousands of dogs into 2012.
Will you join the movement by taking the pledge at www.invisibledogs.org and sharing it with at least 10 people?
Who’s listening to who? Online Dashboards
08/23 2011 Posted in Info Tech | 1 comment
Share Online Engagement – Build a Social Media Dashboard
This is very similar to the one I built for the American Cancer Society. However this one takes a lot less work and does more!
Guest post by Haila Yates, Communications and Outreach Manager, Greenlights for Nonprofit Success
A social media dashboard is an easy way to share a variety of online engagement in a single view. A communications or marketing professional may have a daily routine of checking a variety of pages and accounts to stay on top of the social media conversations relevant to their organization, but it’s just as important that the rest of an org’s staff, board and other constituents stay engaged.
At Greenlights we have a social media dashboard that pulls together a view of our online activities, including tweets by Greenlights and about Greenlights, flickr photos, Google alerts to capture media and blog mentions, Facebook and YouTube content, plus feeds from a variety of blogs our staff reads. Staff and interns at Greenlights are encouraged to set the Greenlights dashboard as their homepage (or one of their homepage tabs) so that they’re always informed about our online presence and can choose to engage in ways they’re comfortable with.
We recently created a social media dashboard for our upcoming event, the Texas Nonprofit Summit. The TXNS dashboard displays tweets about the event, including a twitter search for the event hashtag – #TXNS, a feed created from a twitter list of event speakers, Google alerts to capture articles and blog posts about the event, blog feeds from speakers, a flickr module that gathers photos with our event tags, and a module that simply links back to our main Texas Nonprofit Summit webpage. We’re sharing this dashboard with our entire Greenlights community (not just event participants) via twitter, email and we’re including a QR code to the dashboard in the event program.
Both of our dashboards were created using Netvibes. A free service that’s ideal for setting up personal, private dashboards, but also allows one public dashboard per account.
Greenlights for Nonprofit Success is a 501(c)(3) based in Austin, Tx that strengthens other nonprofits for extraordinary impact and performance by providing a variety of services and resources that are either free or affordable, including management consulting services, professional development workshops and conferences, in-depth research, a membership program and more.
The Texas Nonprofit Summit – You going?
08/4 2011 Posted in Info Tech | 0 comments
It’s only the second best nonprofit conference I attend all year! And I go to a lot. Join me and more than 700 nonprofit professionals, board members, funders, and other community leaders to experience an inspiring two days of learning and networking at the Texas Nonprofit Summit!
In addition to participating in any of 32 breakout sessions, you’ll hear keynote addresses from Beth Kanter, author of Beth’s Blog and The Networked Nonprofit, and Kathy LeMay, founder, president and CEO of Raising Change. You’ll also enjoy a special session from Evan Smith, CEO and editor-in-chief of The Texas
Tribune, (hopefully with some swearing) on For-Profit Lessons for the Non-Profit World. Space is limited and going fast – register today!
http://www.greenlights.org/training-events/texas-nonprofit-summit/
Community Manager Day + Google+ Demo
Thought the audience here would appreciate this. Who knew there was a National Community Manager Day? I sure as heck didn’t till this week.
SOPA + PIPA? What does it mean?
A special guest post from Ehren Foss, CEO of HelpAttack!
In terms of demonstrating the power of online communities to have an
impact in the very offline process of legislation, today is an amazing
day. Wikipedia, Google, and many other sites are putting the SOPA
and PIPA legislation, and their opposition to it, front and center,
and individuals are responding strongly as well. What could be wrong?
Even if these bills are defeated, they will return, and they will
never be perfect. We need great, expert organizations with effective
tactics to have the resources to continue their work. Did you change
your Twitter avatar? Great! Did you black out your website, no
matter how small? Wonderful! It’s time to do more.
Please donate to one of these organizations, of one of your choosing,
right now. The sooner the funds reach them, the sooner they will have
the resources to do more positive things that we can’t do while
looking at our computer screens, changing our Twitter pictures, or
adding Javascript to our sites.
Electronic Frontier Foundation: https://supporters.eff.org/donate
American Civil Liberties Union: http://action.aclu.org/
Sunlight Foundation: http://sunlightfoundation.com/donate/
Open Congress: http://www.opencongress.org/donate
AFTER you’ve done that, please consider sustaining your support by
creating an ongoing HelpAttack! pledge like this one.
Video : Old School vs New School?
A guest post.
Last week, I conducted my first workshop on video communications called “Leveraging Video for Social Change” for NetSquared at Affinity Lab. My presentation was geared towards nonprofits, but my aim was that it would be useful for product developers and small businesses as well. I covered a lot of ground in my 45 minutes, including five reasons all nonprofits should be doing video, my seven types of video formats, plus some simple do’s and don’ts. We ended by watching a few short videos and discussing their content and presentation.
Because I have a traditional journalism background (newspaper reporter) and because online video audiences have short attention spans, my central thesis was that the principles of newswriting apply to video. Every piece of organizational communications needs the 5 W’s (who, what, where, when, why) in some form to truly be effective. They needn’t be spelled out in a direct or even heavy-handed way, but the information needs to be there because that’s what the viewer cares about – why is this important to me.”
What are everyone’s thoughts on the essentials of video communications?
Greg Roth is an independent communications and creative professional in Washington DC. He is the Founder and Owner of Percy Group Communications, specializing in helping nonprofits and small businesses create more engaging content. To learn more, visit www.Percy-Group.com.
Why it’s Time for Nonprofits to Get Social
By Monish Ahuja
The American Association of Fundraising Council recently stated that 60 percent of public charities saw a decrease in donations, with arts, culture and humanities organizations hit the hardest. The findings aren’t surprising, as more than 80 percent of philanthropic dollars are contributed by individuals, many of whom have been financially impacted by the economic recession. When this affect is coupled with a reduction of government funding, nonprofit organizations have been left to find inexpensive and innovative ways to reach new donors to not only continue serving their beneficiaries, but also keep their doors open.
One of the most inexpensive and effective ways for nonprofits to reach new supporters is to utilize social media. Social media’s use and impact on society has been strongly felt over the last few years. Now, no matter where you go, a Facebook icon, Twitter handle or QR code isn’t far behind. So why is social media so important for nonprofit organizations?
- Numbers game – nonprofits looking to reach new supporters need not look further. Facebook recently announced it had exceeded 800 million users. Twitter boasted triple digit growth over the last two years, and Google+ has 50 million users three months after launching.
- Connect the fan base – social media not only allows nonprofits to connect with their supporters and fans, it also allows nonprofits’ supporters to connect with each other. A 2011 Mashable study showed that 59 percent of 30-49-year-old social media users, when asked what they looked for in philanthropic social media, responded that they wanted to interact with other donors.
- Reach individuals with disposable income – a recent report revealed that more than 66 percent of social media users averaged an annual salary of $50,000 to $75,000 – a range that is believed to be the benchmark of comfortable living and provides donors the confidence to give.
- Third party organizations are making it easy for donors – in addition to the direct outreach from nonprofits, third party organizations such as Cause Layouts™, a cause-based Facebook fundraising tool, are making it simple for donors to give back by simply logging on to these popular social networks. Cause Layouts allows users to customize the appearance of their Facebook profile, promote their favorite cause, and share a specific charity with other Facebook friends. For every original user download, Cause Layouts will donate $1 back to the selected charity.
It’s challenging to predict how the ever-evolving social media space will grow over the next 18 months. However, it’s imperative that nonprofit organizations leverage these spaces to reach new supporters, strengthen their fan base, garner donations and utilize third party programs that make it simple to give back.
Monish Ahuja is the president of Cause Layouts, a cause-based Facebook fundraising tool offering a free, turnkey solution for charities and nonprofits to increase donations through the power of social media. For every original download of a Cause Layout, the company donates $1 to the selected charity.
Welcome! I help Nonpofits and people for a living. I do that with Lights.Camera.Help and as a Consultant. I am a published Author, Teacher, Speaker, Blogger, Network Weaver, and Social Media Scientist. How can I help you? 
