Rebooting Democracy: summer reading (and viewing) from Personal Democracy Forum
Posted by: Seth Merritt at 6:11PM EST on July 7, 2008
With a little spare time over the holiday weekend I enjoyed reading the expansive essays in Rebooting Democracy, a recent collection of essays from Personal Democracy Forum. As we celebrate the anniversary of our Independence ("booting" the British?), re-engaging with the ideals of our Republic seems appropriate.
The essays are quick reads and provide an array of sometimes contradictory opinions about the future of democracy in the Internet Age. For example, while some like Pablo de Real or Craig Newmark propose technology as a way to reinvigorate our democracy, danah boyd asks why we lack the motivation to engage as citizens, online or off.
On a related note, most of the sessions from the PdF 2008 (Rebooting the System) conference in June, are now posted on blip.tv and worth watching. The PdF website features post-conference feedback, a nice feature for those of us sifting through the posted materials.
Pre-Holiday Design Resource Roundup
Posted by: Peter Genuardi at 5:31PM EST on July 2, 2008
I like to keep my eyes peeled for awesome design resources that save me time. I keep a trove of these not because I'm lazy (I am) but because I figure I'm not terribly smart, original or creative. If I think of something useful, chances are someone's already beaten me to it (see also last five ideas for .com, .org, and .net startups).
Here's how I do it. I use a news reader called PageFlakes, which I load the URLs for Del.icio.us most popular categories for "design" and "web2.0." I look at it once or twice a day and it provides me with the latest things that other, good designers and interactive experts have flagged as having value. I harvest the ones that look useful and toss the chafe aside.
So, as we gear down for a long Fourth of July weekend, I present to you some of the best design resources I've seen. They're guaranteed to save you time, money and headache (guarantee not good in most states).
Generators
These will do many of the things desktop software would, back in the web 1.0 days. Now that web 2.0 is here, why pay for and install something you can get on the web for free?
How To's
These will give you an overview of how to do something. Read these before going into a meeting and people will think you know what you're talking about.
Samples
These offer pre-written code or design decisions, so you don't have to.
Fun
If life gets you down, check these out.
Data management "out of the box"
Posted by: ChrisOjeda at 7:01PM EST on June 30, 2008
Convio's ability to engage your constituents online and to acquire new constituents gives your organization the opportunity to capture up to date information, such as addresses, phone numbers and, especially, email addresses. As an organization with a Convio powered web presence, you have the ability to send and receive this information to and from your organization's local database for a single view of your constituents.
Convio's built-in solution to online-offline data management is known as data synchronization. Convio DataSync lets you easily exchange data between Constituent360 and an offline database to keep information current and accurate. These DataSync tools can be found by logging in as a Convio admin to your site and navigating to Data Management -> Import/Export. The operations listed under the "All Data Sync Operations" tab allow you to download constituent data (Constituent Data Download) as well as update and add new constituents (Constituent Data Upload). There is even an operation to download transaction information (Transaction Information Download).
These DataSync operations send and receive data via comma-delimited, or csv, text files, with the first row containing the field names. The offline database needs the ability to import and export these types of files to take advantage of the DataSync. While the actual data in these csv files may not be formatted to be "received" by the respective database, these files could be further manipulated, or "transformed", by your organization to meet any formatting requirements. For example, Convio stores "Yes" and "No" as a number (1 and 0, respectively). If your offline database requires a "Yes" or "No" text value for a particular field, you would need to interpret, or convert, this to 1 or 0 accordingly.
Plant a Tree! Outreach International launches new Facebook Application with Multi-Channel Marketing Approach
Posted by: Jordan Viator at 10:37AM EST on June 30, 2008
Outreach International, an organization whose mission is to " help the poor help themselves" and "develop the capacity to create a new future for themselves and their community" launched its first Facebook application online Friday. And with all the new pages, groups and applications springing to life on the popular social networking site, it's sometimes difficult to keep up with all the exciting activity and innovation taking place. To explain more about the idea and strategy behind the new application, Andrew Betts, OI Marketing Director, sat down and shared a few details about the project in an interview.
Share with us the idea and details behind the Outreach International Facebook application? (Name, overall objective, other goals)
Outreach International had created a Facebook page in the past, called sustainable good, which had around 900 people sign up. However, we want to embrace the full potential of Facebook and engage with our audience in a more tangible and relevant way. The best solution for us to achieve this was to create something that would be seen in their profiles and be updated regularly with a great deal of brand awareness for the cause. The Facebook application will be able to act as a ‘badge for the cause’, it needs to be an application that says what they believe in as much as what we (the organization) are able to offer. That way people would not only be interested in having the application on their profile, but also interested in recruiting others to add the application.
The campaign:
Convio came to us and suggested we do a relief aid appeal for the Myanmar cyclone disaster, however as we talked, there were two concerns about that. The first concern, was at the time we talked about doing the campaign, there was an ever decreasing level of media attention that would have left the campaign highly unpredictable in terms of its success. The second concern, was that Outreach International deal with long term solutions and the cyclone appeal need was a more short term solution.
As we spoke further, I decided that we needed to focus on a long term solution project, where the audience could play a tangible part in our story. Therefore, we decided that we would focus on our deforestation work that we had recently done in a few developing country communities, planting 100,000 trees.
As we talked with Convio, they were very clear as to how this concept of deforestation could work and we decided that for every person that added the application, we would pledge to add a tree into a developing country community. For those that wanted to add more trees, they would give a $5 donation for every 10 trees planted. They would then be ranked in order of how many trees they had planted and this would be noted in the application on their Facebook profile.
The goal is to gain 1,000 people giving $5 each.
What made your organization decide to use Facebook for this campaign? Will you be using any multi-channel marketing tactics with this application? If so, why?
We have used email communication a lot with our current donor base, which we believe has been successful in sharing information and updating donors on the work that we are currently doing. However we also wanted to reach a different audience, as we understand the power in creating excitement in a younger generation to become an advocate for our cause.
Convio told us about the difference in email usage for a younger audience, and from that advice, we believed that a social network would create the kind of environment that we needed to communicate our message and engage with this audience. And to do so without our brand being seen as email spam.
We will however use email and other forms of promotion to communicate the launch of the application to our current constituency, but believe the greatest level of growth will come from within the Facebook community itself.
Is this the first time your organization has used social media for marketing and outreach purposes? If so, why have you waited until now? If not, what social media assets did you have before this project and what have your experiences and results using social media been like, so far?
Outreach International has a Facebook page and Myspace site, however our experience with social networking so far has been positive and useful, but it has not been massively impacting or engaging compared to a relative other number of NGO’s on social network sites.
Is there anything you have learned from past nonprofit applications and social media projects? What advice would you share with a nonprofit looking to try new, social media projects such as this?
I think it needs to be something that is interactive, informative and relevant. If the application fails in checking all these boxes then it is likely to be a short lived application.
Want to add the Plant a Tree! application? You can find it here on Facebook.
The 10 Commandments of Web Desgin
Posted by: brandyreppy at 5:28PM EST on June 27, 2008
As an advocate of trend-monitoring on Friday afternoons, I wanted to pass this link along from this week's Business Week. With contributions from some of the most influential people in the web industry today, The 10 Commandments of Web Design outlines ten of the most basic principles for successful web sites (and web experiences).
Check it out - and if you're interested in monitoring still more trends in the industry, check out Business Week's Special Report on Web Design. You can tell your boss I said it's ok if you tell mine the same.
eNewsletters - Be Smart and Contribute to Your Constituents' IQs
Posted by: Robin Anderson at 10:47AM EST on June 26, 2008
 Can email rot your brain? According to this study sponsored by Hewlett-Packard in 2005 – yes! Compulsively checking email can actually reduce your IQ. While I feel I have a pretty good grip on email checking, it occurred to me while reading this, that (like most people) I am overwhelmed by email every day. With so much information coming at me at once, I’ve found it necessary to skim over emails for important information and disregard the rest. For example, I receive several different kinds of eNewsletters, but do I ever make it through the entire thing, reading every word? If only I had that much time… Usually I look for what’s most interesting to me (be it an article for improving my web design skills, an article on human rights in Burma, or some new and strange finding on Neatorama) and skip over the rest, or make a mental note to read more later (which usually ends up being much later…like never).
What does this mean for nonprofits sending out eNewsletters? As with any email (or any written work for that matter), know your audience. What are they interested in? What motivates them? This may seem like a no-brainer, but it is one of the most important aspects of an eNewsletter.
Also, keep the design clean and simple. Nowadays, with the ability to do so much with Photoshop and CSS, it’s tempting to get a little fancy, but when designing an eNewsletter, it’s important that the design allows the reader to focus on the content, not the other way around. Not to mention, many email providers do not fully support CSS, so that beautiful design may end up a garbled mess of broken images and x’s in your constituents’ inbox if you’re not careful. To avoid this, check the email across several different email providers, like hotmail, gmail and yahoo and tweak where necessary.
Linking back to your site is also important. Provide a link to the homepage in the header and 3-4 teaser articles. Then link to the entire article for your constituents to read more. This keeps your email short, while not skimping on content and drives people back to your website. If they are inspired by what they see and read, you may even motivate them to donate. Either way, your constituent is happy to receive an email that piques their interest, gets them passionate about your organization and is easy to read. And that just might contribute to a healthier IQ.
Ideas from Campaign 08: Provide clear and obvious calls to action throughout your Web site
Posted by: Tompkins Spann at 1:07AM EST on June 26, 2008
(This post is part of an eight part series focused on lessons learned from the 08 Campaign. Read the parent article published in Convio Connections
Idea #2 Provide clear and obvious calls to action throughout your Web site
I’ve seen your web site and it’s beautiful, really it is, and there’s so much fantastic content and information I found myself clicking around for minutes! But to be honest I don’t recall being asked to do anything while I was there. Hillary Clinton’s campaign web site mastered this art. During her campaign she prominently displayed on her home page links to “5 Things You Can Do”. By explicitly calling these out, and providing a diverse list of options, no visitor could say they did not feel they were given ideas for how to get involved. This lesson has also been embraced by other media, ABC News has a new campaign titled “The Power of 2” that suggests two new things you can do to impact the environment, your health, your finances, your diet and your community. Regardless of your mission, virtually all nonprofits could do something similar. Consider the following tactics for your web site:
- Provide some easy options. Not everyone is able to come to a house party or give money, so offer a low-effort option or two (e.g. tell one friend this week, place a widget on your MySpace page, or send an eCard to 5 friends).
- In subsequent interactions, be sure to acknowledge the actions they have taken or have committed to take.
- Customize the calls to action based on prior actions and what you know about the visitor. This tactic requires some sophisticated tools (Er, got Convio?) but is a very powerful approach.
- Segment your visitors into 3 or 4 groups and design your action calls based on a quick persona of these groups.
Don't Take Your Staff's Engagement For Granted
Posted by: Chris Bailey at 8:31AM EST on June 25, 2008
Once upon a time, I worked as a membership development director for
non-profit professional associations in Washington, DC. The core
functions of my work centered on new member recruitment and current
member retention, both of which were (and still are) incredibly
important to organizational health. I always pitched to my staff, executives, and
Board of Directors that members are the lifeblood of the association.
Without members - who bring their dues, participation, and energetic
passion - there would be no association. Common sense, right?
But
then, I would follow this with something usually less obvious: without
an engaged staff, there would be no members wanting to bring their dues,
participation, and energetic passion. Too often, professional
associations and non-profits expend so much of their focus on what lies
outside, they can overlook the very people who make things happen
inside every single day (don't worry, for-profits are not immune
either). There's a reason why many non-profits are not run solely by
members or volunteers. It's because the professional paid staff have
the experience, skills, and talents to help members and volunteers
achieve great organizational goals.
If
you're in a leadership role for a non-profit, take some time today to
think about your staff and whether they're truly engaged in their work.
Because non-profits are usually mission-driven, it's easy to take
employee engagement for granted. But an engaged staffer who has the
ability to use their unique strengths, talents, and passions on a daily
basis is far more likely to deliver the kind of remarkable service that
attracts new members or constituents and retains them.
Here are a few questions to ask. Start by answering yourself and then pose them to each staff member during your one-on-ones:
- Are you able to use your own unique strengths, talents, and passions everyday in your work?
- What would you like to be doing more of that will help you grow your strengths?
- Are there barriers that keep you from bringing your best to your work every day?
Deeply
listen to what is said and learn from what you hear. Then make a point
to take action and openly communicate that action and results to your
staff. Just don't push this under the rug. And don't let your employees feel invisible. That's a sure-fire way to kill engagement and
create the kind of service culture that loses both employees and
constituents.
Lessons Learned from User Testing
Posted by: laceykruger at 11:38AM EST on June 24, 2008
As a user experience professional, I’ve worked on small,
medium and large projects. I’ve learned that the smaller the budget and
timeline, the harder it is to include user testing in the project. Ideally, in
every project I’d love the opportunity to sit down with some users and watch
how they interact with the site since, in my opinion, this is the best way to
really understand how to meet their needs. Alas, I often have to skip over this
step and in these situations, I’ve always relied heavily on my industry
experience and expertise to provide recommendations on usability best practices
– I’m an expert, right? Lately, in the context of user testing, I’ve learned
some things that have made me re-think my standard set of “best practices”
which has really allowed me to understand (and now evangelize) the importance
of user testing.
Here’s an example – in the past when I’ve helped clients
re-evaluate their sitemaps and navigation, I’ve always considered it a standard
and widely acceptable practice to exclude “Home” from the navigation bar and
assume that users will know to click on the web site logo to return to the
homepage. Here are some sites you may recognize that follow this
standard:
In a recent user test on a site set up in this exact way, more than
half of the participants struggled to locate the homepage once they had browsed around the site. One user clicked the
Back button six times until they landed there! Now, I’ve really slapped myself
in the knee and realize that we just need to spell it out every time.
Not only does this demonstrate the importance of user
testing when you’re implementing a new site or redesigning, but it also goes to
show how we can continually build upon and re-think our bank of best practices
knowledge as we go through the user testing process. Can you think of any other
examples of how you’ve re-thought what you originally considered a standard or
best practice? Please share in the comments if so.
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