James Young

Photo by Ruben

Do you remember when Mobile was just a kid with a dream, and nobody believed in him besides himself? Well, he’s grown up a lot lately and proven his worth. I’m happy for him. I really am, but I hope he doesn’t let it go to his head. He has more growing to do.

Sure, he raised over $20 million for Haiti and an impressive array of non-profit organizations including American Red Cross, Oxfam America, Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity, International Rescue Committee, and the United Nations Foundation  used his services. Good for him. But is that it? I mean, seriously, is raising money all he can do? Is that all he wants to do?

He may have you fooled, just like all the famous TV curmudgeons with hearts of gold. Mobile can do more, and he can do it pretty well. He has people using him for a lot of other purposes geared toward engagement beyond donations.

• Consider the Humane Society of the United States, who used a text message to give a heads up to their constituents that an email fundraising appeal was coming to their inbox soon. The people who got both the text and the email were 77% more likely to give.
• Consider how Shedd Aquarium, using an integrated approach, had TV spots that asked people to send a text message to enter a contest. They also had TV spots that drove people to a website. The text version of the TV spot outperformed the others by a large margin.
• Consider how The Blue Ocean Institute uses text messages to inform their constituents about the kind of fish it is OK to buy or eat.
• Consider how It’s OUR Healthcare!  used a text to screen campaign to empower constituents to text in healthcare related message to a huge TV placed in front of the California Statehouse.

You see, he has game in other ways besides mobile giving. And I wonder what he has up his sleeve. He doesn’t hang with me as much as he used to because he has been spending a lot of time with iPhone, Black Berry and Droid. I’m not jealous. It’s kind of his job. They seem like they are cooking up some big plans.  I heard them talking (I couldn’t help it, they were loud. I wasn’t eavesdropping):

• Applications seem like a pretty cool way to present specialized experiences on the phone, especially now that applications can push messages out to you. I haven’t seen any applications on my phone that let me find volunteering opportunities near me this weekend. I have seen a super cool application for the Houston Zoo that tells me all kinds of good things about the animals there.
• Location-based services are going to be big too. You know, the ones who ask if they can use your current location and then show you all of the other people who are in the Mobile Fan Club within a 5 mile radius. That technology could be put to better use, like CauseWorld is doing, letting me check into places I like to go to anyway, and have some big corporation donate to my cause because I probably bought their beer while I was there.
• Mobile giving through special mobile-browser optimized forms, where you can give more than $10 at a time. Really, why can’t I give more than that each time? Just give me a form and I swear, I’ll donate more.
• Augmented reality applications, where you can see data overlays of the very world in front of your eyes. For example, I look at a library through my phone and I see data that tells me how many illiterate people there are in my city and where I can volunteer to teach people to read.

Yessiree, I like that Mobile kid. I think he got a bright future. Not to sound like too much of a fan boy, but he is the coolest. If you haven’t met Mobile yet, you should. Let me know, I’ll hook you up.

I know, I know, non-profit organizations are not corporations, but everyday I see someone saying that we can learn from trends in the corporate world. So here goes with the big statement. Drum roll.

According to an annual survey conducted by McKinsey & Co., corporations are seeing benefits from adopting web 2.0 technologies, in myriad ways. They are seeing “measurable business benefits, including more innovative products and services, more effective marketing, better access to knowledge, lower cost of doing business, and higher revenues.”

I’ve been reading this study dutifully for the last 3 years and watched how the attitudes of corporations have changed from something like “I’ll give it a try” to now saying “ we are seeing benefits both inside and out.”

One big standout for me was the statistic that claims 52% of respondents feel they have increased the effectiveness of their marketing using web 2.0 tools, with a median improvement over 200 of 25% in raising awareness, 17% in converting to buyers and 20% in generating loyalty.

There were internal benefits as well, with 68% citing an increased access to knowledge, up 30% from 2008, and 54% claiming reduced communications costs, up by 20% from 2008.

Another fact I find interesting is that there are a number of tools evaluated in the study, and across the board, these tools were seen as adding value internally and in customer relationship building.  Functions at the company universally reported finding value in these tools.

Finally, McKinsey proves they get it by providing a nifty data visualization tool to see the survey results, because most people like pictures.

I think this signals that social media tools have finally made it to the big time, something that many non-profit organizations have already decided, either due to foresight or necessity. So, how can non-profit organizations use this study to their advantage? I can think of 3 things:

1. We can approach using social media for vendor/partner relations a little more cautiously based on benefits seen in the corporate world
2. We can focus on certain tools over others based on what is reflected in the corporate world, although I would urge each of you to look closely at your own constituents and your organization and apply some judgement, because what works for some may not work for others
3. We can use this study as justification to ask for more investment from our superiors

This last point is the most important, I feel, because of having attended too many conferences where the audience declared something to the effect that I can only devote a quarter of my time to social media tools.

So, go ahead, tell your boss that McKinsey & Co. says to spend more resources on social media. There are benefits, after all. 

Recently, I was in New York City for a mini vacation with my family, seeing all of the tourist traps with my kids, who had never been to the big apple. Of course we saw Central Park and the Zoo therein, to see if the animals from Madagascar were hanging out, and we saw FAO Schwartz and Times Square and the Empire State Building. We also went out to Liberty Island to see the Statue of Liberty. While touring the island, listening to my pleasant audio guide chattering away on my headphones, I learned of a constituent empowerment campaign from long ago. Let me tell you about it.

The French government extended the gift of the Statue of Liberty to the United States in 1876, in recognition of our first 100 years as a nation. The statue was a gift, of course, but America had to come up with the pedestal on which to set the statue. Various efforts, such as events and auctions, were held to raise funds to pay for the pedestal, but these efforts were falling short, since only a certain class of society could afford to contribute to pay the bigger dollars required of these tactics. It looked as if the statue would arrive on our shores without a home to go to, so to speak.

In stepped the owner of the biggest newspaper of the time, The New York World, Joseph Pulitzer. He was astounded that America was so apathetic concerning this magnificent gift. His scathing editorials demanded that America step up and provide a home for such a beautiful work of art. Again, this tactic only achieved so much.

At this point, Pulitzer made his genius move. He promised to publish in his newspaper the name of any individual who contributed any amount to the fund. The money started rolling in.
 
Pulitzer’s tactics were not exactly the same as what I call constituent empowerment but it is pretty close. He realized that there were a lot of people in the U.S.A. who could help a little bit with the effort, if assured that any amount would help and the donor were properly rewarded.

The Internet and especially social media tools empower constituents to “have their name published” in a way by providing a way to publicly affiliate themselves with a cause for a very modest, oftentimes free, initial investment.  Think of the success of cause related wrist-bands as example. Badges on Facebook are another.

We all know humans like their 15 minutes of fame, and most people like to be a part of a movement. What could you offer to your constituents that empowered them to be a part of a movement and achieve a little notoriety in their community or network?

It worked for Pulitzer and it could work for you. 

To read a more thorough history, see the excellent National Parks Service site.

Like most professionals these days, I have to spend a fair amount of my time preparing presentations, to my boss, my colleagues, my clients, etc. This means time spent translating my thoughts into both words and pictures that convey the meaning in the best, clearest, and most persuasive way. I have noticed that, personally, I respond better to the presentations that rely more on the pictures than the words. I think a lot of other people do too, and I wondered why that is.

In a post on his blog, Logic + Emotion, David Armano mentions that 60 to 65% of people are visual thinkers, meaning that they do their “thinking through visual processing using the part of the brain that is emotional and creative to organize information in an intuitive and simultaneous way.” If this is true, than more than half of the people reading this post are already looking for the picture to get what I’m talking about. While the practice of using images to convey meaning is nothing new to humans, dating back to the earliest cave drawings, putting data into visual representations seems to have taken on a new life in this day and age where mashups are king on the internet. Below are some links to a great collection of data visualizations. You should check them out and be inspired by what you see to figure out how you could present your data more visually to engage constituents.

• Information Aesthetics
• Wed Designer Depot post on data visualization
• Smashing Magazine article on data visualization

I came across a recent example of one our Convio’s clients, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, doing something really cool with data visualization called This Place Matters. The campaign creates an opportunity for you and I to share the places that had an impact on our lives, share our stories and hopefully inspire others. They visualize this great collection of places using mapping functionality, and they tie it all into their Convio system using our APIs. They have created a lot of ways for people to share, incorporating pictures as well. I loved looking at the map of all the places people have considered worthy of mention, drilling down into my own community and seeing some places very near me where I can go.

Not only was this a great engagement vehicle for a great organization, but it drove a lot of new constituent acquisition as well. You can read more about the campaign on the case study presented by Charity Dynamics, the partner who helped make this a reality.

I would imagine that all of your organizations have something that you could present in a visual way that would make it more likely that your constituents would engage with you. Find it, and be creative. You’ll be amazed at the result. FYI, there is a wordle at the top of this blog post, which is a visualization of the actual words written.

This morning, while eating breakfast and drinking coffee with my wife, we were discussing 15th Avenue Coffee & Tea, the new Starbuck's effort to reach the independent spirit. Essentially, Starbuck's is opening new stores, but with a new name and attitude. Peter Merholz, in his post Why the Starbucks "15th Ave" Store Is Doomed to Fail thinks that Starbucks is going to fail because, try as they might, these new stores are not authentic independent coffee shops. I agree with Peter.

Assuming that the goal was to reach more people, specifically the people who didn't want a homogeneous coffee shop experience, we started thinking about better ways Starbucks could have gone about this. It seemed to me that Starbuck should have truly made each store unique by taking the time to pick their locations, study the neighborhood, and open a store that fit the personality of the surroundings. If your lone businessman can do it, why couldn't Starbuck's afford to do it? Starbucks would still own the coffee shop, supply the coffee and goodies, and reap the profits. They would also have an authentic presence in that market.

To equate this to thinking about how social media can work for nonprofits, this notion has the earmarks of the latest thinking in social media theory:

 1) Listen first and then plan an approach based on the way your audience want to be approached
 2) Be authentic and personal, not an institutional presence
 3) Be willing to lose control and adapt

These are things you have probably heard already in your work determining how to use social media.

Then my wife then had what I think is a brilliant idea. She said, "Why doesn't Starbuck's act as a Coffee VC?" Whoa! Starbuck's listens to the pitches of entrepreneurs who want to open a coffee shop, helps them with operational knowledge, money and of course supplies all of the goods necessary. In this way, Starbucks could truly independent coffee shops designed by people who know the neighborhood, without having to sacrifice control over the supply chain.

I like it. Maybe Starbucks will too. But, again, what does that have to do with nonprofits? The concept applies.

If I were a nonprofit trying to grow my constituency by being the best at what they need, and I struggled with the questions of...

 A) What services and information do my known and unknown constituents need?
 B) In what manner do my known and unknown constituents want to consume these services and information?

...I would be so glad to be able to have these constituents come to me saying this is what I need and how I want it. Oh, by the way, I'll be happy to help you deliver this stuff to my neighborhood as well. In fact, it might help because my friends trust me more than they trust you.

Using social media correctly, in essence by following 1, 2, and 3 above, let's you act as a VC. Social media tools let you hear real people, respond as a real person, and listen in as other real people spread your message. You can be more agile, more viral, and more effective. In effect, you can be local coffee shop everyone loves.