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Social Media can be time-consuming and confusing, so what is the best way to make effective use of your limited resources? Have a plan! Join me on Wednesday March 31st in San Rafael, CA for my workshop Social Media 201... John Kenyon

object data="http://video.fastcompany.com/plugins/player.swf?v=0fd64afa78711amp;p=fc_social" height="235" id="embedded_player_0fd64afa78711" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="384"param name="movie" value="http://video.fastcompany.com/plugins/player.swf?v=0fd64afa78711p=fc_social"/param name="allowfullscreen" value="TRUE"/param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"/param name="base" value="http://video.fastcompany.com"//objectbr / br / This awesome video from Fast Company says a lot in just a few minutes. nbsp;I know I could not have said it better.br / br / And I dont think this just applies to our mission statements. nbsp;I think you can use the ideas in this video to apply to a lot of the content, messaging and stories we write. nbsp;How many times have you written something that you think is great, only to have it edited so much that you cant even remember why you wrote it.br / br / We try to appeal to too many audiences, make sure all of our bases are covered. nbsp;By covering all the bases, you are diluting the message.br / br / Lets all try to be more concise and say what we mean, skip the buzz words and trying to say it all. Say what is important and end it.div class="blogger-post-footer"If you like this post, subscribe to my blog.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/2411109339520612489-5429957365639584894?l=steveheye.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Heye-tech/~4/c6tMWxVq0Z8" height="1" width="1"/

Professionals for Nonprofits has just released their 2009 data on nonprofit salaries for three metropolitan areas: New York, New Jersey, and Washington, DC.  While many of the jobs in the surveys command a competitive salary on average, it’s obvious that not all locales pay their nonprofit staff at New York levels. In fact, it’s pretty much an accepted truth that most nonprofit professionals (of all ages) don’t make very much money.

Is that true for you? If so, what kind of salary would you be happier with? Would you be happier with your salary if you had more benefits? Which ones?

I want to know where all of you dear readers stand on this. Let’s talk.

Photo credit: Call Centre Helper

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pOur Student Billing Roundtable yesterday was a great success. Thanks to everyone who participated! If you missed it, check out the a href="http://www.blackbaud.com/files/support/downloads/sb/sb031010.wmv"recording/a and the a href="http://www.blackbaud.com/files/support/downloads/sb/sb031010.ppt"Powerpoint presentation/a. nbsp;/p pWe#39;re having another roundtable on Tuesday, April 13 at 2:00 p.m. ET so a href="https://www.livemeeting.com/lrs/1100003672/Registration.aspx?pageName=nrbw438pj2xgc15x"register today/a! We hope to see you there!br //p img src="http://forums.blackbaud.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=91053" width="1" height="1"

pHere are the most popular Forums posts as well as unanswered posts from last week:/p pbMost Popular Topics:/b/p ul lia href="http://forums.blackbaud.com/forums/t/14460.aspx" target="_new"report/query format/a/li lia href="http://forums.blackbaud.com/forums/t/14484.aspx" target="_new"Email Types/a/li lia href="http://forums.blackbaud.com/forums/t/14284.aspx" target="_new"Cumulative query omitting certain appeals/a/li lia href="http://forums.blackbaud.com/forums/t/14424.aspx" target="_new"Best practice for solicit codes?/a/li lia href="http://forums.blackbaud.com/forums/t/14457.aspx" target="_new"duplicate criteria specified in configuration/a/li/ul pbUnanswered Posts:/b/p ul lia href="http://forums.blackbaud.com/forums/t/14448.aspx" target="_new"Windows 7/a/li lia href="http://forums.blackbaud.com/forums/t/14493.aspx" target="_new"Reporting on Total Gift Amount/a/li lia href="http://forums.blackbaud.com/forums/t/14470.aspx" target="_new"Email donor acknowledgement letters/a/li lia href="http://forums.blackbaud.com/forums/t/14439.aspx" target="_new"Volunteer Job Record - add time frame and # of volunteers?/a/li lia href="http://forums.blackbaud.com/forums/t/14467.aspx" target="_new"How to pull constituents who have a relation with a specific Constituent attribute?/a/li/ul pbNew Shared Client Documents:/b/p ul lia href="http://forums.blackbaud.com/forums/p/14450/83997.aspx#83997" target="_new"Donor Update Form/a/li/ulimg src="http://forums.blackbaud.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=90386" width="1" height="1"

p span class="inline inline-left"img src="http://nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/allyson_kapin.gif" alt="Allyson Kapin" title="Allyson Kapin" class="image image-_original" width="61" height="66" /span class="caption" style="width: 59px;"strongAllyson Kapin/strong/span/span nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; span class="inline inline-left"img src="http://nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/jocelyn_harmon.gif" alt="Jocelyn Harmon" title="Jocelyn Harmon" class="image image-_original" width="61" height="66" /span class="caption" style="width: 59px;"strongJocelyn Harmon/strong/span/spanYes, the iPad is small, lightweight and slim. But can you swim with it? /p p You remember the a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/01/women-mock-the-ipad-calling-it-itampon.html"flap over the iPad/a, right? Most women certainly do. It's a clear reminder that technology is a man's world. /p p Of course, it shouldn't be, especially in the nonprofit sector. Our workplaces should reflect the values we're working for -- because it's the right thing to do. It's also the sensible thing to do. Diversity in your teams will ensure you're not alienating the very people you're trying to include. /p p What's the right way to approach diversity in our tech teams? Lucky for us, Allyson Kapin and Jocelyn Harmon put together a great session for the a href="/ntc"2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference/a: quot;a href="https://www.ntenonline.org/eweb/DynamicPage.aspx?webcode=SessionDetailsamp;ses_key=f4b88cff-ccf8-436d-8a0d-3eed2593fe87"Diversifying Your Tech and Online Communications Teams/aquot;. I had a great chat with them where we covered everything from quot;the massesquot; to quot;quotas.quot; /p p Take a listen: /p p /p p a href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=308734429"img src="/sites/nten/files/images/itunes.gif" border="0" alt="Subscribe to the NTEN Podcast" title="Subscribe to the NTEN Podcast" width="155" height="50" /br / strongSubscribe to the NTEN Podcast/strong/a /pdiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/UrceeIwSzL0" height="1" width="1"/

p div class="posterous_bookmarklet_entry" pa href="http://www.paulmyoung.net/2010/03/my-parents-doctor.html"From Paul Young's blog/a:/p blockquote class="posterous_medium_quote" p...today, the family doctor needs to have the ability to ldquo;fixrdquo; everyday problems, but even more importantly, to know when it is in everyonersquo;s interest to engage a specialist for the good of the patient./p pIn the care of people, the family doctor is a highly skilled diagnostician, excellent basic caregiver, and able to coordinate treatment in the same way a conductor leads the orchestra. Thatrsquo;s the role for the person who was once a generalist in regards CRM systems./p pIf yoursquo;re a specialist, I salute you and your dedication to your craft. If yoursquo;re like me however, donrsquo;t be ashamed. Just like a hospital full of surgeons, oncologists, and ophthalmologists isnrsquo;t the optimal mix for life long health care for people, integration specialists and coders need people like us who can see the big picture. Hold your head high and go read the new release notes so you can keep everyone on the same page!/p /blockquote pGreat post. Even though I'm not a Salesforce consultant and only serve as an administrator for one organization, I can so relate to this./p /div /p pa href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/seize-the-future-by-the-throat-my-parents-doc"Permalink/a | a href="http://judisohn.posterous.com/seize-the-future-by-the-throat-my-parents-doc#comment"Leave a commentnbsp;nbsp;raquo;/a /pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=6wcmbwRRJVY:gGKzrqJCNrs:qj6IDK7rITs"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?a=6wcmbwRRJVY:gGKzrqJCNrs:RpyxPU2o2ec"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/viewfromhome?i=6wcmbwRRJVY:gGKzrqJCNrs:RpyxPU2o2ec" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/viewfromhome/~4/6wcmbwRRJVY" height="1" width="1"/

p emEd. Note: As we prepare for the a href="/ntc"2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference/a, we wanted share a wee bit of the wisdom our speakers will be serving up, so as not to overwhelm you when you get to Atlanta. We're asking them all to share their answers to five very important questions./em /p p span class="inline inline-left"img src="http://nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/gergory.heller.thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" class="image image-thumbnail" width="100" height="67" //spanstrongSpeaker:/strong Gregory Heller, a href="http://civicactions.com/"CivicActions/aa href="http://civicactions.com/"/a /p p strongSession:/stronga href="https://www.ntenonline.org/eweb/DynamicPage.aspx?webcode=SessionDetailsamp;ses_key=35a34547-6891-46cb-8bed-84ccdc585b0b" Working with Open Source Software and Vendors/aa href="https://www.ntenonline.org/eweb/DynamicPage.aspx?webcode=SessionDetailsamp;ses_key=73de6fd5-7da7-47cc-880b-ca4cc6e0da17"/a /p p emstrong1. What's the most important trend in nonprofit technology for 2010?/strong/em /p p Free and Open Source Software. Whether it is on the desktop like Firefox and Open Office or the Ubuntu Linux operating system, or on servers (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) and running CMSs and CRMs (like Drupal and CiviCRM). I think that many nonprofit organizations are looking at these open source tools as they have really matured and been adopted by government and big companies including many fortune 500s. The late 2009 release of the Open Government Directive is really exciting and I'd like to see an analog in the nonprofit community -- an Open Nonprofit Directive if you will, to encourage transparency, participation and collaboration. Of course Twitter and social media in general will continue to be big, and we may see advanced collaboration tools like Google's Wave gain adoption in 2010 as people figure out how to use it. /p p emstrong2. Why do you think your session topic is important for nonprofits to address?/strong/em /p p We're in a deep recession. Nonprofit funding is not what it may have been 2 or 3 years ago. When you don't have to pay for proprietary software licenses, or work with only a small group of vendors providing proprietary tools, I think there are great values to be found. Last year's Keynote speaker Eben Moglin talked about the morality of free and open source software and what he really identified as a moral imperative for nonprofit organizations to spend their limited resources advancing FOSS rather than boosting profits at proprietary software companies. My session, quot;Working With Open Source Software and Vendorsquot;, will give non profit decisions makers an idea of how to identify and work with open source vendors and tools and provide an opportunity for them to ask questions of vendors, software project developers and people like them who have gone down this road already. /p p emstrong3. What's the one thing you want attendees to remember from your session?/strong/em /p p Free and Open Source Software is mature, robust and enterprise ready. Choosing the right vendor for your organization is important as your vendor will, in a big way, define your experience of the tools. That's two things, and they should remember them both! /p p strong4. Which Muppet do you most identify with and why?/strong /p p Gonzo. Gonzo is an entertainer, a showman, and a daredevil. I like to take the stage, show off new and exciting technologies, and every once in a while, get fired out of a cannon. Gonzo was also a traveling plumber, and that is something I can identify with. Over the last four years or so, I've traveled to work with many clients helping them unclog the the internet strategy quot;tubesquot; and get things flowing. /p p strong5. Where can people follow you online (twitter, blog, etc.)? /strong /p ul liBlog: a href="http://www.CivicActions.com/blog"http://www.CivicActions.com/blog/aa href="http://www.seachangestrategies.com/blog"/a/li liTwitter: a href="http://twitter.com/gregoryheller"@gregoryheller/a/li liDelicious: a href="http://delicious.com/GregoryHeller"http://delicious.com/GregoryHeller/a/li /uldiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/je98hU3PZa8" height="1" width="1"/

a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_5Yu11Uvgrlo/S5e9SJjTIfI/AAAAAAAAAy4/v580rnLVxQA/s1600-h/KimberlyWilsonJenniferLee.jpg"img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 208px; height: 156px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_5Yu11Uvgrlo/S5e9SJjTIfI/AAAAAAAAAy4/v580rnLVxQA/s320/KimberlyWilsonJenniferLee.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5447030393827172850" border="0" //aLast night I had dinner at Cafe Gratitude with a href="http://www.lifeunfoldsblog.com/"Jennifer Lee/a, creator of the a href="https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?ii=118533amp;c=ibamp;aff=102494amp;cl=26337%22%20target=%22ejejcsingle"Right Brain Business Plan/a and a href="http://www.kimberlywilson.com/blog/"Kimberly Wilson/a, the creator of the eco-fashion line, a href="http://www.tranquilit.com/idevaffiliate/idevaffiliate.php?id=175"TranquiliT/a. They're also two of my three co-collaborators on the a href="http://havefundogood.blogspot.com/2009/12/creative-women-entrepreneur-survey.html"creative women entrepreneurs retreat/a. Very inspiring ladies!br /br /I am just finishing up Jenn's Right Brain Business Plan e-course, a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?ii=118533amp;c=ibamp;aff=102494amp;cl=26337%22%20target=%22ejejcsingle"img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 144px; height: 216px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_5Yu11Uvgrlo/S2caiuzcafI/AAAAAAAAAxY/GX3_uJhGK8E/S220/rbbp-badge-bookcover.jpg" alt="" border="0" //awhich was super fun, interesting and clarifying for me as I chart out the next phase of my business, a href="http://brittbravo.com/"Big Vision Consulting/a. I highly recommend you take her e-course the next time she offers it, and look for the Right-Brain Business Plan full-length and full-color book that will be published in early 2011. She also sells a a href="https://www.e-junkie.com/ecom/gb.php?ii=118533amp;c=ibamp;aff=102494amp;cl=26337%22%20target=%22ejejcsingle"Right Brain Business Plan e-book/a.br /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.tranquilit.com/images/banner-rect.jpg"img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 180px; height: 150px;" src="http://www.tranquilit.com/images/banner-rect.jpg" alt="" border="0" //aWhile at dinner, Kimberly showed me one of the very pretty pink infinity scarves that will be a part of the a href="http://www.tranquilit.com/idevaffiliate/idevaffiliate.php?id=175"TranquiliT Spring collection,/a that a href="http://www.kimberlywilson.com/blog/2010/03/ballet-inspired-spring-sneak-peek.html"you can see a sneak peak of here/a. In addition to being an eco-fashion designer, Kimberly is also an author of two books. She was in the Bay Area to promote her newest book, a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.tranquilista.com/"Tranquilista: Mastering the Art of Enlightened and Mindful Play/a, which I enjoyed very much.br /br /a href="http://havefundogood.blogspot.com/2010/02/supporting-have-fun-do-good-with.html"As I mentioned last month/a, I am trying out being an affiliate for both women's businesses (the Right Brain Business Plan and TranquiliT) as a way to support writing Have Fun Do Good, and producing the a href="http://bigvisionpodcast.libsyn.com/"Big Vision Podcast. /abr /br /You can learn more about Kimberly's work by reading my November 2009 a href="http://havefundogood.blogspot.com/2009/11/do-good-tranquilista-interview-with.html"interview with her on Have Fun Do Good/a, or listening to it on the a href="http://bigvisionpodcast.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=551277"Big Vision Podcast/a. You can learn more about Jennifer's work by reading my January 2009 a href="http://havefundogood.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-to-make-your-big-vision-real.html"interview with her on Have Fun Do Good/a, or listening to it on the a href="http://bigvisionpodcast.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=426541"Big Vision Podcast/a.br /br /!-- AddThis Button BEGIN --br /diva title="data:post.title" url="data:post.url" class="addthis_button"img src="http://s7.addthis.com/static/btn/v2/lg-share-en.gif" alt="Bookmark and Share" style="border: 0pt none;" height="16" width="125" //abr /script type="text/javascript" src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/250/addthis_widget.js#pub=xa-4ad66b3710a455bc"/script/divbr /!-- AddThis Button END --div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/15585808-2514883563645435971?l=havefundogood.blogspot.com' alt='' //divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/HaveFunDoGood/~4/yziCgXZLT1Q" height="1" width="1"/

pBack in December (or thereabouts; it was a while ago and I#39;ve garnered a couple more gray hairs since then), I posted a workaround for users who were experiencing the error bWord cannot start the converter Mswrd632.wpc/b after they installed a Microsoft Windows security update (KB973904). The error would be encountered when trying to run Mail Merges in Blackbaud#39;s software but also with any other software that needed the converter which was disabled by the update./p pAfter that posting, a couple of users responded that they were concerned about the workaround as it essentially reversed part of the update. Well I#39;m happy to report that the workaround provided to us (and then to you) by Microsoft now has a fix in the form of a utility called bMicrosoft Fix it 50352/b (again from Microsoft; note the creative name). To get the fix, check out a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/973904" target="_blank"Microsoft Knowledge Base article 973904/a and download and run the utility as instructed. We#39;ve also got the information in our a href="http://www.blackbaud.com/kb/index?page=contentamp;id=bb708164" target="_blank"Knowledgebase (BB708164)./a/p img src="http://forums.blackbaud.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=90229" width="1" height="1"

Find more photos like this on So You Think You Can Do Social Media

Note From Beth:  Since 2007,  I've been using, adapting, and remixing the Social Media Gamesocial media workshops for nonprofits.  In fact, just last month, I took it to India.  Last year, I facilitated a version of the Social Media Game for Packard Grantees as part of a convening on Network Effectiveness in Washington, DC.   Dave Witzel was a participant in the workshop and thought the game could be adapted as apart of training on social media at the staff retreat.  The big challenge with training is the challenge of transfer - after people go through a training - do they actually put the knowledge and skills into practice?  

Also, the game is licensed under creative commons - which means folks are welcomed to use as long as share and share like (with attribution).   EDF has embraced the spirit of this sharing - not only remixing a version of the game for their organization,but also sharing back the materials and what worked!  

That's why I invited Kira Marchenese, to write a guest post about has happened since the training last year.

Last fall, we marched all 350 or so Environmental Defense Fund staff through two days of a social media challenge.  Looking back, I’m happy to report that the experiment paid off.

Why did we do this?

We know that very soon, social media will no longer be optional. Already, some of our advocacy work is progressing in large part because of savvy use of social media (see our blog about chemicals and toxics).

We have a mix of staff who dived into social media long ago (see our business innovation blog and green business twitter feed), and others who have maybe sort of heard of Twitter. We wanted to give everyone a chance to get more familiar with the tools, and, more importantly, understand how social media is relevant to their goals.

What did we do?

We went all-out. EDF periodically brings our entire staff together for an in-person retreat. This year, the retreat theme was social media. We crafted a two-day challenge, mixing all-staff sessions with smaller group time. Here’s the overview:

EDF Staff Retreat - Intro to Social MediaView more presentations from Eric Schwartzman.

• Everyone attended a 90-minute presentation by Eric Schwartzman on what social media is and why we should pay attention. He’s energetic and knows his stuff, so it was a good start.

• A few EDF staffers joined Eric on stage to share what they’ve done with social media. This was really important – hearing colleagues talk about their posts being read by EPA officials or members of international negotiating teams made the point in a way no consultant could.

Then the hands-on part started:

• We broke into teams of 40 to 70 people, based on the type of work we do. For example, everyone who works on ocean issues was on the same team. Each team received a challenge in their field that they had to meet through social media.

• Each of the six large teams divided again into tables of 10. At the small tables, we played an EDF version of the social media game developed by Beth Kanter and David Wilcox.

• After each table developed a strategy, the large teams picked one strategy each to develop a pitch around. They spent the next 24 hours refining the pitch. And then the fun really started!

Each team pitched their idea to the full EDF staff. The pitches included costumes, music, video filmed on-site, mock-ups, and social media demos.

We all voted, and the winning team got budget money to fund their social media plan. How did it go?

People were extremely engaged. Every EDF staffer had to do this. Our biggest worry was that people would find it irrelevant to their work and would check out. Breaking up into small tables worked – I saw table after table of people leaning in, standing up, gathered around flip charts. I didn’t see anyone checking their Blackberry, which was pretty amazing. And people from assistants to VPs poured energy into crafting the pitches, you can see from the scene at t-minus 3 hours and t-minus 30 minutes.

And that made the presentations really good. Teams took ownership of their ideas and were revved up to show them off. They threw themselves into writing scripts and filming, gathering costume pieces, and otherwise doing much more in 24 hours than I would have thought possible. Even the teams that spent the least time preparing gave polished overviews.

The “game show” conceit made it all more fun. Our host, Rachel “Seacrest”, and the judges did a great job of moving things along and lacing the presentations with some clever silliness. The audio-visual crew did a top-notch job juggling all the video, countdown clocks, slides, props and miking, adding to the sense that this social media stuff is really big-time.

We could have refined the structure of the two days. Even with the tailored materials, and a dry run, there were many things I’d do differently next time. If you’re considering running this game yourself, definitely check out what we learned!

Lots of great ideas. EDF staff came up with some really interesting ideas. Not every table had a social media plan ready to execute (”handing out flyers” wasn’t one of the social media tools we encouraged!) but several of them are already being executed.

Did it make a difference?

Three months later, what do we have to show for it? Or, in other words, should other organizations consider doing this? Here’s what we’re seeing.

An explosion of EDF bloggers. We have a new transportation blog, Way2Go, and new participants in our international climate talks blog. The contributors to our blog about Texas energy re-tooled how they write and edit posts to make it more flexible and inclusive. And two more new blogs are on the way.

But I’m most pleased that EDF staff are evaluating how blogging will help achieve their goals, not just blogging for the sake of it. One of the best conversations we’ve had is with a department that decided to put off blogging for now, since it made sense to invest in other tactics first. I love seeing our staff make smart, well-informed choices.

Not just the usual suspects. We’ve always had a small but energetic group experimenting with social media. We’re now seeing both interest and confidence about social media from people who were never part of that experimental vanguard. Lauren Guite, our online team’s outreach coordinator, says that not only are these “unusual suspects” truly interested, but she’s impressed with their understanding of why the tools are important.

Plans to re-run the game. Three different groups have come to me asking for help re-running the game to generate ideas for specific projects. I can’t think of a better indicator that people found it useful.

(See more details on these results from EDF’s Social media challenge on my own blog.)

Biggest challenge now: How to find the time?

We had to cut staff last year, the economy remains rough, and the planet needs a lot of saving. When staff choose to engage in social media, they spend less time on something else. We’re seeing this play out in a cycle of enthusiasm and guilt. People get excited about something — tweeting, setting up Google Reader, signing up for Facebook. But other priorities get in the way, and it becomes just something else that’s still on their to-do list the next week. They feel bad when we check in with them and they haven’t gotten to it yet.

In the big picture, if people see results from social media, they’ll keep engaging, and if they don’t see results, they shouldn’t feel bad about stopping. But getting started requires a leap of faith that time spent trying social media is time well spent. And when there’s so much going on, it’s hard to make that leap.

The time we spent on this at the retreat definitely helped amp up the enthusiasm part of the cycle, pushing more people into making the leap of faith.

Kira Marchense is the Online communications director at Environmental Defense Fund.
 

These days you can’t roam far in our non-profit world without hearing the buzz about “social networking” or “social media”.  Wherever you go, you can’t help but overhear people talking about Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking tools.

These services provide organizations a great way to connect with supporters and provide new channels for fund raising, but how can you best integrate these tools into your Web site for the maximum impact?  What are the best practices in tying your social networking strategy with your Web site communications strategy?

We’ll answer these question and more at the next Soapbox Salon!

PICnet’s Soapbox Salon
Social Networking 101: Successful Strategies Connecting Soapbox with Twitter and Facebook

When: Thursday, March 18, 2010
Time: 12:30pm – 1:30pm ET
Where: PICnet’s DC Office – 1605 Connecticut Ave. 3rd Floor, Washington, DC (across the street from the Dupont Circle Metro station’s north exit)
What:  You bring your questions, ideas, and lunch, and we’ll bring answers and refreshments.

Please RSVP by Wednesday, March 17 by clicking the link below and registering for the event.

Questions?  Contact Julie Dennis at julie@picnet.net or by calling (202) 585-0273.

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Registration — http://bit.ly/acgTlR
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NFG Announces Melissa Johnson as New Executive Director The Board of Directors of the Neighborhood Funders Group is delighted to announce that Melissa Johnson will assume the role of Executive Director effective April 5, 2010. Ms. Johnson succeeds Bettye Brentley, who served with the organization for eight years. Johnson brings to NFG extensive knowledge of the philanthropic sector, having served as Field Director for the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP), since 2007. While at NCRP, she had primary responsibility for membership development, building a robust presence in the field, and educating foundations on the organization’s research, policy, and publications. As the new Executive Director, Melissa Johnson will effectively guide NFG’s mission to strengthen the field of philanthropy and provide the organization’s membership with the networking and knowledge needed to be more effective grant makers.

In 2008, I did an interview with my fellow young nonprofit leader Melissa Johnson where I asked her if she wanted to be an Executive Director when she grew up. Her answer was a resounding “NO.” Well, well, well, it just goes to show that you never know where your nonprofit career will take you! Melissa is not only an amazing young leader, but a dynamic and thoughtful sister who I greatly admire and look up to. Please join me in congratulating her in her new role at the Neighborhood Funders Group!

NFG Announces Melissa Johnson as New Executive Director

The Board of Directors of the Neighborhood Funders Group is delighted to announce that Melissa Johnson will assume the role of Executive Director effective April 5, 2010. Ms. Johnson succeeds Bettye Brentley, who served with the organization for eight years. Johnson brings to NFG extensive knowledge of the philanthropic sector, having served as Field Director for the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP), since 2007. While at NCRP, she had primary responsibility for membership development, building a robust presence in the field, and educating foundations on the organization’s research, policy, and publications. As the new Executive Director, Melissa Johnson will effectively guide NFG’s mission to strengthen the field of philanthropy and provide the organization’s membership with the networking and knowledge needed to be more effective grant makers.

About the Neighborhood Funders Group

The Neighborhood Funders Group is a membership association of grantmaking institutions.  Our mission is to strengthen the capacity of organized philanthropy to understand and support community-based efforts to organize and improve the economic and social fabric of low-income urban neighborhoods and rural communities.  We provide information, learning opportunities, and other professional development activities to our national membership, and encourage the support of policies and practices that advance economic and social justice.

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pIn a href="http://forums.blackbaud.com/blogs/raisersedge/archive/2009/12/11/news-you-can-use-error-in-mail-merge-after-installing-windows-security-update.aspx" target="_new"December/a, we reported that the Windows security update (KB973904) released on December 8, 2009, changed the way that Windows and third-party components use the WordPad-to-Word 6.0 converter, which caused users to receive the error, bWord cannot start the converter Mswrd632.wpc/b when attempting to run mail merges in The Raiser#39;s Edge.nbsp; Microsoft has issued a utility to address this issue. Go to a href="http://support.microsoft.com/kb/973904"Microsoft Knowledge Base article 973904/a to download and run bMicrosoft Fix it 50352/b to resolve the issue. nbsp;This information is also in Knowledgebasenbsp;solutionnbsp;a href="http://www.blackbaud.com/kb/index?page=contentamp;id=BB708164"BB708164/a./pimg src="http://forums.blackbaud.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=90138" width="1" height="1"

a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_cOrBUnxk7o4/S5a6HNZFEEI/AAAAAAAAAFk/H4f_T7T_o3E/s1600-h/hoot.jpg"img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 87px; height: 87px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_cOrBUnxk7o4/S5a6HNZFEEI/AAAAAAAAAFk/H4f_T7T_o3E/s200/hoot.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446745432367894594" border="0" //aI have been a loyal a href="http://www.tweetdeck.com/"TweetDeck /auser for quite some time and have finally decided to see what all the rave is about with a href="http://hootsuite.com//"HootSuite/a. span class="fullpost"br /br /So far, there are a few great selling points (other, of course, than it being free). HootSuite is a great tool for managing multiple twitter accounts. You can easily select an account to tweet from with the HootSuite dashboard.br /br /It is also great for measuring influence by seeing how many people have clicked on one of your links and where people were when they clicked (such as facebook or twitter).br /br /The one thing I've found a little tricky is working with groups. It doesn't appear to be a feature (or maybe it's just one I haven't figured out yet). The way I've been handling groups is by a href="http://mashable.com/2009/11/02/twitter-lists-guide/"creating a private twitter list /aand then adding that list into one of my HootSuite columns.br /br /The a href="http://blog.hootsuite.com/tag/hootlet/"Hootlet /ais also a great option for sharing links on twitter. Add it to your browser toolbar. Then, when you find a site you want to share with your twitter followers, you simply click on your Hootlet. It's a very handy tool. br /br /So, I haven't completely converted from Tweetdeck. But, I'm getting there!br //spandiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4887255539682839233-9149177534595043432?l=nptechnology.blogspot.com' alt='' //div

What: Webinar – Get Started on Facebook
When: March 11, 1pm EST/10am Pacific
Sign up!

Many nonprofits and libraries are using Facebook to interact with their constituencies and reach out to new audiences – but what’s the best way to get your organization started on this hugely popular social networking site?

In this webinar, Kami Griffiths will interview social media consultant John Haydon, who will walk through the essential steps to establishing and managing a successful Facebook presence for a nonprofit or library.

We will also hear from Gabe O’Neill of Kids Are Heroes, who will share lessons learned from developing their own Facebook page.  Get practical how-to information, learn best practices, ask questions, and leave with action items that will help you create an engaging Facebook presence for your organization.

This webinar is for people who are beginning to explore Facebook and have questions on how to get started.

Sign up now.

pHere#39;s some info from Jeff:/p pRecordings of the roundtables are now available. There were two sessions, one for 3.2.5-3.3.5 users and a separate session for 3.4.1 users./p pa href="http://www.blackbaud.com/images/blogs/the_spotlight/3.2.5.zip%20" target="_blank"Download the recording/a for 3.2.5-3.3.5./p pa href="http://www.blackbaud.com/images/blogs/the_spotlight/3.4.1.zip%20" target="_blank"Download the recording/a for 3.4.1./p img src="http://forums.blackbaud.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=89272" width="1" height="1"

piContinuing a series of five posts on a project, began in 2008, by the Blackbaud Documentation team. /ibr / /ppbBy:/b Georgeanne Cheng, Ellyn Hassell, and Lindsey Robbins/p Wow! We learned a lot in this project. It#39;s been over a year since we began and we still have more we want to do. For example, we want to streamline our process for taking survey data and entering it into our TFS customer contact database. But, before we move forward, we wanted to share what we learned along the way. Without further ado, here are our top 10 recommendations/best practices... ollibDocument everything/b you learned through the research and implementation phase./lilibPost the best practices/b in a place that#39;s easy to edit and improve over time. /liulliWe posted ours on an internal wiki. Easy to update whenever we get feedback./liliWe also provided a table of the TFS work item fields. Each field has an entry on the table. Easy to look up when one is not sure about what to enter on a field./liliProvide as many great examples as you can. We spent a lot of time on examples to make sure they reflected the type of content we hoped for in the work item fields./li/ullibPractice entering customer contact information/b in the form before you begin using it as a team. We discovered fields we didn#39;t need or could improve upon when we were practicing the form ourselves. Workflow recommendations can be ironed out at this time as well./lilibWhat fields need to be required?/b When you think about this, you can determine which fields you absolutely need for form entry and which are nice to have. Having only the bare minimum required fields ensures it#39;s a quick painless process. If you get more data, awesome but if not, at least it#39;s better than nothing at all, which is what you#39;ll get if you create a form with lots of required fields/lilibMake note of known issues/b or hiccups you discover with the work item. For example, we discovered the following issues:/liulliWhen you link and work item and save it, your reciprocated links may not initially appear (on the Details tab). You may have to close the work items and reopen them to see the links. On rare occasions, you may have to restart TFS in order for the links to appear. This is a known issue with TFS./liliYou cannot delete a saved work item. You can make it obsolete./li/ullibCreate flyover text for fields./b Okay, so we know not everyone is going to stop what they are entering in a work item to open up an internet browser and review the help documentation. So, we created short flyover text to help users enter content in the fields./lilibCreate queries ahead of time /bfor your team to use. Saved queries prevent frustrations and headaches trying to find work items. We provided instructions on how to access the customer queries and how to choose what displays in the query results. We created the following queries ahead of time./liulliAll Contacts - Customer contact work items not tagged as obsolete./liliContact by Source - Customer contact work items with an iteration path of Documentation/Customer Contact/Source. Sorted alphabetically by source type./liliDeleted Contacts - Obsolete customer contact work items./liliDo Not Contact - All customer contact work items with quot;Do not contactquot; selected in the Communication field./liliMy Customer Contact - All customer contact work items assigned to you./li/ullibProvide a short tutorial/b to your team before implementation. Walk them through the work item and explain why you are making the change. But, you almost must expect to help people the first few times they need to use the form. 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We even asked many a questions of Google. Lots of people use TFS and provide answers on the interwebs. All you have to do is ask. We even had meetings where we had more questions than answers. It also never hurt just to ask another person in our department if they knew anything about an issue we were having. If we ran into a roadblock, we were directed to another person and to another person until the issue resolved. You#39;d be amazed what you can learn and accomplish when you ask questions. /li/ol pbUp Next... /bEllyn closes the series of blog posts with a discussion of what#39;s next. Where do we go from here?/pimg src="http://forums.blackbaud.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=77278" width="1" height="1"

p emEd. Note: As we prepare for the a href="/ntc"2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference/a, we wanted share a wee bit of the wisdom our speakers will be serving up, so as not to overwhelm you when you get to Atlanta. We're asking them all to share their answers to five very important questions./em /p p span class="inline inline-left"img src="http://nten.org/sites/nten/files/images/Sarah icon.thumbnail.jpg" alt="" title="" class="image image-thumbnail" width="100" height="100" //spanstrongSpeaker:/strong Sarah DiJulio, a href="http://mrss.com/"M+R Strategic Services/a /p p strongSession: /stronga href="https://www.ntenonline.org/eweb/DynamicPage.aspx?webcode=SessionDetailsamp;ses_key=d85295e6-f679-446d-8ed1-8f211f5be619"Superheroes of Online Fundraising: Become a Data-Driven Strategist/aa href="https://www.ntenonline.org/eweb/DynamicPage.aspx?webcode=SessionDetailsamp;ses_key=9e27f6a5-1720-4ad1-8ee0-058a2260bcbb"/a /p p emstrong1. What's the most important trend in nonprofit technology for 2010?/strong/em /p p I think the most important trend this year is multi-channel convergence: using mobile, email, web, broadcast, print, twitter, etc. to maximize your impact. Email alone isn't as effective as it used to be, and given the media clutter these days, the only way to stand out is to get your message out via multiple channels, so that your constituents are hearing from you from all angles. Some initial testing of mobile text has shown that, while direct response is relatively low (unless you are the Red Cross!), complementary text messages can significantly improve email response rates. While it's harder to conduct a scientific A/B test, the same appears to be true for channels like Facebook and Twitter. /p p emstrong2. Why do you think your session topic is important for nonprofits to address?/strong/em /p p My session topic -- Becoming a Data-Driven Superhero -- provides insight into one of the most cost-effective ways to grow your online program. What if you could increase your response rates by 20%? Or your average gift by $15? Or convert twice as many web site visitors to subscriber? All without a significant new marketing initiative? Using data and testing to optimize your program is an essential strategy that all nonprofits should have in their toolkit! /p p emstrong3. What's the one thing you want attendees to remember from your session?/strong/em /p p Test! Analyze! Test some more! /p p emstrong4. Which Muppet do you most identify with and why?/strong/em /p p Kermit the frog. /p p emstrong5. Where can people follow you online (twitter, blog, etc.)? /strong/em /p ul liWebsite: a href="http://www.mrss.com"www.mrss.com/a, a href="http://www.e-benchmarksstudy.com"www.e-benchmarksstudy.com/a/li liTwitter: a href="http://www.twitter.com/dijulio"@dijulio/a/li /uldiv class="image-clear"/divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/nten/~4/JIymRYgrNxw" height="1" width="1"/

My latest post is up on the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog.  You can read the post and join the conversation on the SSIR blog here, or read the copied post below.

—–

A new report from the team at Forrester came out last week: Tapping The Entire Online Peer Influence Pyramid.  It comes at the same time that I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the importance of community builders/managers/leaders or organizational voices to give permission back to the community members.  The evaluation and recognition of peer influence, something that is not only prevalent but inherent in social media, is something that help empower and sustain your communities AND increase your staff capacity.  Let’s discuss!

First, let’s talk about permission.

As organizations or community builders active online, working to practice and create quality engagement, we are often trying to guide, collect or herd conversations and interactions into spaces that we have created or monitor closely. When I say “give permission,” in this post, I’m really saying that you should balance the herding and collecting of the community with the encouragement and empowerment for the community to go wherever it wants with your message or information.

Giving permission to the community is really just recognizing that conversations already take place in spaces online where you don’t have a presence, a fan page, or a profile. That people talk about your services or programs, issues or sector wherever they are and you may never know about it, know them, or be part of the conversation.

Giving permission to the community to have conversations without you requires trust. You have to trust that the community will take your communications or mission forward. You have to trust that the community will monitor or respond to comments or issues in a way that matches the way you would (that you’ve modeled the behavior the way you want it repeated).

The conversations and connections that are taking place elsewhere, whether it’s on or offline, don’t have to remain a mystery to you, though.  Give permission for your community to report back – and provide the mechanisms to do so.  Create places for or explicitly ask for feedback, not just about what you do and how you do it (which you probably already do) but also what your community is doing, learning, hearing, seeing, interested in and so on. This way you can build active two-way communications that help you stay informed but also empower the community members to be part of team.

Now, what about peer influence?

I’ve talked before about how to map your community and the messages within it.  What’s so great about the chart from Forrester at the top of this post is that it shows you a great way to view segments of your database in an influential way. You don’t simply have to say there are people that respond to action alerts and those that don’t… I may not sign your petition, but what if I’m forwarding it on? What if you could send powerful invitations to spread the word or rally behind a cause or action to a select group of people instead of creating mass mailings to everyone you know?  Think of the difference: your communications become more strategic, more streamlined, and more efficient by recognizing those in your list that fall into the different peer influence categories!

Giving permission to peer influence

All of this is really to say: you can create a multiple win for your organization and your community by giving permission to broadcast and influence on your behalf.  It sounds simple, but there are always infastructre requirements behind everything.  In order to give permission and leverage the peer influencers in your community, you need:

• to create a dashboard, toolbox, or any other catchy name where influencers can grab images, videos, files or messages that are ready to be broadcast
• to create opportunities for influencers to be unique or valuable with their participation
• to monitor how your influence tools are used (“share with a friend” or RT or so on) to see what content is best or most successfully shared and if there are new influencers emerging
• to provide recognition or spotlight for those that are taking your message into their networks and creating impact
• to help your staff, team or organization to understand the value in distributing the communications and influence of your work, and help them leverage the network  in similar ways across all departments and campaigns

What do you think?

How has your organization seen peer influence or community leaders emerge in social media? How have you created ways to give value back to those driving your message to their own communities? (Think about all of this in terms of campaigns, fundraising, events and more!)

Join the conversation on the SSIR blog or share your ideas in the comments below.