Baratunde Thurston ponders #MLK in Vanity Fair, and comes up with a solid quote: “All too often, Twitter encourages shallow understanding even from those who have your best interest at heart.”

2. Which charities spend the most on administration?

In the coming year, non-profits should…

1. Resist the Shiny Toys
This is not a good year to upgrade – anything. Operating systems, platforms, web services are all in a serious period of flux and reinvention. While it could be argued that change is a constant in the tech field, this year seems worse than others. And when we say “worse,” we also mean “awesome”: new versions operating systems, and entirely new operating systems; rapidly maturing netbooks vs. notebooks vs. smartphones vs. tablets; cloud computing replacing desktop computers. Google Wave is a good example: it’s probably going to reinvent how we all work together on the web. But, right now, it’s still a little cryptic.  In all, there are enormous changes underway this year. From the persperctive of a non-profit with a limited budget, though, best to hunker down for a year and stick with what works.

2. Get Mobile
Your next computer may be a smartphone. More and more of your audience are getting their content through a mobile device. The devices are getting smarter, faster, and more location aware. You should start thinking about how your nonprofit can take advantage of this trend. In particular, consider mobile micropayments – how can your donors make a quick, small donation to your cause through their phone? This might not be a big revenue source this year, but it’s the way of the future.

3. Listen Up
Having your own Twitter stream is great, but listening to other people’s tweets is even better.  Consider how can you take advantage of online tools for to become a better “listener” this year: it could be as easy as some ongoing searches for keywords that matter to your organisation on Tweetdeck (www.tweetdeck.com). It’s also getting easier to pool all your listening in one place – whether that’s through a free service like iGoogle that lets you rss your blog, podcasts and twitter keyword search returns to a personal page, or whether you invest in integrated social media monitoring on a tool like Radian6 (http://radian6.com/)   2010 is the year you can expect dramatically different use of listening online as a way to reach out to stakeholders – so listen up.

4. Become Transparent – in real time!
Transparency has always been an issue for non-profits, but now it’s important to learn how to be pro-active about putting your data on the web. You need to be actively engaging your audience by making your actions and results available online and in real time. Certain types of donors are much more likely to give once they’ve researched you thoroughly. They’re more likely to give again if they believe you’re clearly communicating/working with them towards your common goal.

5. Manage Your Content
Your office is going to make your social web presence a greater priority. You can’t avoid it – even if your organisation doesn’t have a Facebook page, your employees do. And your volunteers. And your donors. And they are all talking about you. So figure out how to manage and distribute your content effectively with these tools.

6. Plan for Social Media
Social media is not going away. Position your non-profit for success this year by including a social media strategy or outreach plan in any media plan you create. It’s not replacing the traditional ways you reach out to the public, but it is a key component.

There it is: our advice for surviving 2010.  Help add to the list: what are you telling your boss (or your staff) to look out for this year?

Kidding. That’s an excerpt from last year’s post about the UN Climate Change conference, when we did a case study of the Polish website (and Avaaz). It’s just that, when it comes to climate change and making UN information accessible, so little has changed since last year that everything’s feeling, well, a little recycled.

Our criteria last year for a good conference website holds up: conference websites have to be clear, pretty, interactive and useful to thousands of stakeholders with radically different needs. Last year, we thought the Poles had given it a good try. Sure, it wasn’t the prettiest website, but they tried to make complicated information as accessible as they could through an issues quickfinder and a section called “Essential Background”. But they also used a lot of jargon. Can the Danes do better? Well, here’s the conference website.

It is pretty. But clear? Here’s a litmus test: see how quickly you can find these key talking points. Bonus question: Could you understand the talking points once you found them?

- Why are they holding this conference?

- Who’s speaking for the EU at the conference?

- What was achieved at the last UN Climate Change conference?

- What has convinced scientists that humans are largely responsible for global warming?

You get bonus points if you managed to make it through any of the blogs. Now, I am not in favor of dumbing down a message. But I am a believer in in information that’s accessible, clear writing and a conference website that I can use to access the issues. However, by explicitly targeting only the press, ngos, businesses, researchers and delegates, you – the person using the website who couldn’t afford to get to that conference in person – could be forgiven for feeling a little left out.

There’s some decent use of traditional media that does make accessing the conference issue easier (for example, it was a good move to post the news feed prominently and they’ve made it searchable by target audience) There is also an interactive comment tool that lets you send your greetings to world leaders on the main page, then re-broadcasts them at the top and on screens at the conference. But they lose serious ground on information management, and on some of their basic social media offerings by not treating it as social media – besides their heavily managed Climate Change Thinker blogs,  they’ve created a Facebook Page  that doesn’t allow Fans to post to the wall, and a Twitter feed that appears set only to broadcast.

Where they seem to be concentrating their social media efforts is in Raise Your Voice, a Youtube channel that solicits video messages from users as well as from more famous (and unexpected) contributors like Emma Thompson, Jet Li and Desmond Tutu. Part of the channel frames the big issues through selected user comments, and lets you either comment yourself, or vote the featured comment up or down.  This bit works well, but it’s a shame that the rest of the conference website isn’t as welcoming to people looking for information or tools. What if there was a conference wiki, or a collaborative platform available to users where ideas and brainstorming could take place? What if there was an online gathering place where e-delegates could present about their organisations (say an online version of the International HIV/AIDS conferences’ Global Village gathering area?) What if the website’s search engine could link users to academic information or reports. What if – here’s a brainstorm – some of the blogs were written by the rapporteurs for each session?

What if this site was a way for the world to enhance the talks at Copenhagen? Sadly, unlike climate change, constructive use of Web 2.0 for conferences appears to be moving way too slowly.

("Brains! Braaaaiiiaaaiiiiaaaiiinns" reprint courtesy Noie to Signal/Rob Cottingham)

There’s something about the grey depressingness of Hallowe’en in Canada that brings out the zombie in everyone. Trying to make your next presentation a thriller? Need some (ahem) braaaaaains to help you through your new duties as social media champion?

Help is on the way.

First, Social Signal (full disclosure: I’m their social media  strategist) has launched Open SoSi - an open sourced, step by step introduction to every bit of their intellectual property – free tools, free methodologies, fantastic ideas. If you want to stay appraised as they release new tools and advice week by week, you can follow them on Twitter, or you can visit their OpenSoSi page to begin from the beginning.

My favorite release so far has been Rob and Alex talking about the Concept Jam workshops Social Signal offers – these are full day workshops used to identify an organisation’s best social media options and get everyone on the path to imagining your strategy. I’ve worked on these presentations, and I still learned something new from this post where they mention an excellent downloadable book by Andy Goodman (”Why Bad Presentations Happen to Good Causes”) Not everyone’s secure about their Power Point skills, but after OpenSoSi and this book you’ll be armed with all the know how you need in order to — zombie metaphors aside — slay your next audience.

Happy Hallowe’en!

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Extra extra: Canadians, improve your communities and win big bucks. October 31 is the last day to submit to Round 1 of the Aviva Community Fund, which could fund your non-profit/community organisation/band of inspired people’s next great project to improve the community. Successive rounds will be open to new ideas but it pays to get in it to win it early – winning is dependent on the number of votes you can raise for your project.

For more advice, you might want to check out the earlier post that I wrote when I first started working at Social Signal, which links you up nicely to Alex’s Harvard Business School blog post with her advice, as well as our posts on socialsignal.com about how to get hired.

Between April 19-23, a gaggle of executives visited Iraq as part of a U.S. State Department tour.  The department said that “the executives would offer ideas on how new technologies could help foster transparency, strengthen civil society and generally empower people and local groups by providing the tools for network building.”

Now, maybe I’m cynical, but aren’t we waiting for technology to achieve this in many countries?  Such as, perhaps, the U.S.?  And how exactly will technology make Iraqi governance better?

Don’t get me wrong – I think it’s fascinating that Wordpress is visiting a warzone.  And I’m definitely on the optimist side of the line when it comes to rebooting democracy.

But this is a situation where the police are still getting blown up on a daily basis.  The governing parliament is barely functioning.  1% of the Iraqi population has internet access.   So I wonder what Twitter could really bring to the game right now.

What is this, then?  Hi-tech colonialism?  Payback for supporting Obama?  Or – maybe – it’s a bunch of companies genuinely to do some good, against some serious odds.  We shall see…

The Green Party seems to have a pretty good handle on things – nice website with lots of useful tools and information, good presence on Facebook.  Looks like they’re using Drupal behind the scenes –  nice to see some open source support…

The Liberals also have a solid website with various media, and an interesting approach to encouraging “digital activism” through social media: you can sign up to use your Facebook profile or your blog to promote their cause.  They also have an “Open Platform” section of the website, that allow you to participate in surveys, web panels, social networks, digital “town hall meetings” and policy forums.

Like the others, the NDP are using multimedia effectively on their website, with fresh videos and photos available on a frequent basis.  Facebook? Check.  Twitter? Check.  Like the Liberals, they have a system to recruit “Rapid Responders” who use their social networking tools to push the party. 

Based on all this, I’d say that the Obama-riffic campaigns in the US have left their mark here in Canada.  Web presence and social media are definately being given some priority this time round. 

But the real test lies in who has tweeted most recently.  As of right now, it looks like the last tweet from the the Liberals was 13 hours ago; from the NDP, 15 hours ago;  the Greens, 22 hours ago.  Tsk, tsk, gang.  Pick up the pace!  I want to know what you had for breakfast!

Also, Social Ch@nge is working on a story about the Name of Russia contest – voters across Russia were supposed to vote for who they thought Russia’s national heroes should be. Contenders were a mix of artists, writers, military and sports heroes. But mysteriously, the final votes went to the most controversial candidates after some pretty impressive dynamics – reportedly, Stalin went from a top contender, to twelfth, and then finally came third. Some people are saying the contest was outright hacked. Do you read Russian? Did you vote? Know where we can find out more? Email us or leave a comment at Social Ch@nge. Check out the link for the contest here.

Original Photo courtesy of Flickr user wallyg (CC Licensed)

Have you ever experienced that dreamy, hungry look on the face of non-profit organizations’ staff when you say: “I have experience in fundraising”? No matter whom you speak to, be it directors or campaigners, the chances are good that you’ll grab their attention. Better yet, if you offer to help their fundraising efforts as a volunteer, they will veer between the wish to hug you and the attempt not to seem too enthusiastic. But once you go into detail, talking about fundraising strategies, possible financial sources and so forth, this lovely atmosphere might be replaced by misunderstanding. There are certainly various ways to raise funds in Europe; and depending on where you want to get your money from, “experience in fundraising” translates into very different skills.

Issue No. One: Grants vs. Individual Donors

My experience in Europe is that fundraising is usually understood as grant writing. By contrast, the idea of developing a strategy to obtain and enlarge a basis of individual donors is met with scepticism. Instead, organizations prefer to put this effort into creating a project proposal from scratch within a few days.

In her book Fundraising for Social Change, Kim Klein breaks the myth that most of a non-profit’s funding should come from foundations or corporations. Instead, 75,6% of contributions  to successful non-profits stem from individuals. Many people in the US and Canada will already know these stats. But then again, the book is written from a American perspective, where community fundraising is a traditional, successful tool  for various reasons – one being a historial lack of social services provided by the state. So what about Europe?

With the welfare state in place and the European Union and many foundations offering grants, individual charity might be much less important. NGOs – particularly small NGOs – often focus their fundraising activities almost exclusively on project grants. This holds especially true in new EU Member States, where European Structural and Cohesion Funds are available (see also a Wikipedia article on these funds). This results in a focus on constant “project work” with no possibility to develop longer-term strategies.  It also sets up a  culture of looking down on fundraising as an “Anglo-Saxon” approach, one which does not work in Europe. Because of this, organizations are increasingly lacking funds for overhead costs. This has been affirmed by Blackbaud’s survey on the European State of the Not-for-Profit Industry 2008. The survey among 466 non-profits in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands shows that 54% of respondents in the UK and 48% in Germany respectively (but only 13% in the Netherlands) are having trouble getting funds for general operating purposes.

I contacted Kim Klein to ask how she would handle this situation. When confronted with this European perspective, she suggested a little more reflection: “Do people in European communities support a church or other faith based institution? Do you ever see people give money to someone who is homeless? Is generosity considered a virtue?” (For the record: the answer to all three questions is “Yes”.)

And she continued: “Usually these questions cause people to realize that money is being raised and money is being given away, even if it is not as common as it would be here in the USA. When I have travelled and gotten these objections, I have reminded people that the history of grassroots fundraising in America is full of these objections: in the 1940’s, many people said ‘Americans will never respond to mail appeals. They are invasive and it is un-American.’ By the 1980’s, most donations were made by mail. In the mid 1990’s, many people said, ‘The internet will never work for fundraising.’ Today on-line fundraising is the fastest growing area of fundraising.”

Issue #2: The Internet

One would expect internet fundraising to be met with the same scepticism as fundraising in general, because after all it also asks for individual giving. But on the contrary, online fundraising  in Europe is up and coming. The survey mentioned above shows that about 50% of organizations already use online fundraising and that this is expected to grow further. Donation buttons seem to have become a standard feature on non-profit websites, and during the last week, I spoke with people from three different  European organizations who were psyched about creating their first Facebook presences, welcoming social media and its possibilities.

I wondered where this seeming contradiction comes from. On the one hand, it could simply be that the young employees and volunteers of these organizations personally like using Facebook and the internet. But on the other hand, today’s patterns of involvement in charity could make online fundraising the appropriate reaction to a more sporadic civic engagement and a reluctance to become actively involved. Clicking a button is easy and the effect of giving money for charity seems to be the same. (Actually, I’m convinced it is not the same – but that’s a story for another blog post… )

In any case, solutions for an effective use of the internet for communications and fundraising are still desperately sought after by many European non-profits, with only about a third of the Blackbaud’s survey respondents considering their websites effective.  The possibilities of online communications channels to the general public are only vaguely recognized. Usually, Facebook presence or other online activities are managed as an afterthought to other duties, or by volunteers.

I’m guessing that you’ve all already thought about these two fundraising issues. So what is your advice to the Europeans? Does individual fundraising make sense in (Central & Eastern) Europe? Are there alternatives to grant writing? Do you know of good examples which can serve as models for European online fundraising efforts? (As far as I know, fundraising via Facebook is not possible for Europe. Yet.)

Please let us know through your comments.