What's your most important nonprofit technology New Year’s resolution?

Joining my neighborhood fitness club, eating healthier and getting more involved in local activities are all great resolutions to make my life better in the New Year. But Connection Café is reserved for sharing ideas and insight that helps nonprofits make the world a better place so I’ll save my extensive (and unoriginal) list of resolutions to bore my friends and family…

Rather than sharing our personal resolutions here, we’re teaming with a number of nonprofit bloggers and thought leaders to help create a community discussion and sharing of the best - and maybe worst - resolutions nonprofit professionals can make to help them fulfill their mission in 2009. And to help capture all the great insight the nonprofit community has in store with its resolutions, we’ve also created a poll to capture your ideas on how to make technology work for you and your organization in 2009.  

Most of my friends rarely follow through on their resolutions (never me, of course!), but we don’t want that to happen to people in the nonprofit community. Because we all run into challenges and obstacles that keep us from keeping our resolutions, we won’t just be creating a community discussion, but rather we’re going to listen to the resolutions and obstacles you share and use that to create a meaningful and useful Resolutions Guide. This guide will provide helpful advice, tips and success stories that can better help you keep your 2009 resolutions.  But we need your help to create it. And to make the guide as useful as possible to all nonprofits using technology, we want to not just hear your actual resolutions but the obstacles and challenges you face in keeping these as well.

Our CC bloggers will be sharing resolutions this week and next, commenting and linking to some of the best we see in the blog world and all the while listening to your resolutions and challenges to develop the guide. So please share your resolutions and challenges in the comments section below, on our 2009 Resolutions Poll and discussion thread or email them to me directly at jviator@convio.com. 

We resolve to help you keep your resolutions, but we need to hear more from you before we can help so take the poll and drop us a comment.

And don't forget to check out these great nonprofit bloggers’ resolutions for 2009. They'll be sharing their 2009 outlooks and plans over the next couple of days, and you might just find yourself inspired or inclined to drop them a comment, as well.

• A View from Judi Sohn
• Beaconfire Wire
• Donor Power Blog 
• Everyday Giving 
• FI Space
• Mobile Commons 
• NTEN Blog 
• Social Actions Blog
• Tech Soup
• Robert L. Weiner Blog
• TREW Marketing Spotlight

And by the way – happy New Year!

The Congressional Management Foundation has put out a report on how to improve the state of affairs for communicating electronically with Congress.  The report was released on December 8, 2008 (with an interim report published earlier this year in July).  I think that everyone who is doing grassroots and online advocacy campaigns should read the full report, so download it today. 

Here are some of the take-aways I thought were most notable - some of which reinforce already accepted best practices, and one that was new to me:

Citizens should:

• contact your Member of Congress once per issue unless you have new information to provide
• be courteous even if you disagree with your Member's position on the issue
• clearly state your position
• tell a personal story about how the issue affects you

Organizations should:

• be specific in the sample letter about the bill number and the position your organization is taking (pro or con)
• use constituent matching (this is a big one - make sure your members are communicating to their Representative or Senators only)
• make it clear to your members to whom their letter is being sent
• identify the organization behind the grassroots campaign

The "identify the organization behind the grassroots campaign" recommendation made me sit up and take notice.  I used to think it was better NOT to identify the organization, and instead to spend a lot of time and effort making it seem like the letter from the constituent had no connection to an organization at all.  We used various techniques like rotating subject lines for the letter to Congress, rotating a carousel of letters, and not naming our organization in the text of the letter.

Turns out that's not necessarily a good investment of time.  Hill staffers prefer to know which organization is facilitating the communication, as well as an easy way to categorize the organization's and constituents' position on the issue or bill.  And I can't say I blame them, knowing that the volume of messages they receive and must reply to is growing every year.  (I'm not done with my Christmas cards yet, and it's going to be a race to the finish line this year, so I really feel for them.)

The report also calls for a new model of constituent correspondence management on the Hill.  It refers to an aggregated communications dashboard, essentially a tool for managing the volume of incoming corresponence while preserving the ability to read and respond individually to messages.  This dashboard would summarize such pertinent data as the issue/bill number, the issue position of the organization (support/oppose with comments) and the constituent comments.  CMF's study also recommends identifying the vendor as well as the organization so there is a contact in case technical issues are identified.

In addition to easing the burden of managing constituent correspondence, there's another potential benefit for Congress.  Over time, this system would essentially be compiling database of the "poli-fluentials" in a Member's district.  See pages 15-16 of the report - poli-fluentials are people who participate in online advocacy, and are 7 times more likely to be "influentials" in their social networks.  (If you attended the "Social Media for Social Good" webinar yesterday, you probably learned about influentials and social networks.)  There's a lot more to say about poli-fluentials than I can fit in here - maybe a topic for another day.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to look up some of the older advocacy campaigns that I worked on, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that for the most part, the campaigns I put out in 2001-2006 followed almost all of these best practices (except for the "identify the organization" one).  I'm sure some of my lobbyist colleagues had a lot to do with keeping our letters clear and concise, since most of them had been around the congressional block as legislative correspondents or assistants.  So thanks, guys!

Anyway - the 111th Congress is just around the corner, so if you haven't read this study, get it today and spend some quality time with it over the holidays.

I hope you all had a chance to join us yesterday for our webinar called Social Media for Social Good. Emily Riley from Forrester Research and Beth Kanter from Beth’s Blog both gave great presentations that really complimented each other. If you missed it, you can register to receive the recording at http://www.convio.com/socialgood.

I’d like to extend my thanks to Emily and Beth for participating, and to all of the audience for your good, insightful questions. We had so many that we couldn’t get to all of them during the webinar, so we’ve answered the overflow here:

Q: How can we use social media tools when working with clients in an agency specifically concerning privacy or HIPPA issues?

Emily:  This is something I don’t have the ability to answer at a legal or privacy level. I will say that there are regulations that relate well to offline consumer relationships that don’t apply well online. It makes sense to work with your legal team as well as with colleagues to combine efforts at creating different norms for the web.

Beth:  That is a question that is not easy to answer in a couple of sentences because there are so many "it depends" variations.  It depends the context, who is having the conversation, etc.  I gave a presentation about Healthcare, Nonprofits, and Social Media. If you review the links and examples, you'll find some general answers to that question.

Q: How do we get past our fear of negative comments possibly being posted about the organization from activists etc.?  It seems like reviewing all posts and not posting those comments would defeat the purpose....

Emily:  I have one word of advice, go Google something right now and add the word “sucks” with it. For example “Starbucks sucks” will show a lot of issues around free trade and other image problems. These are talked about and posted online regardless of your participation. It is something that needs to be accepted because the groundswell is already taking place. Rather, it makes sense to start with listening. Before you feel like it is necessary to host a community or answer the posts, take some time to really understand what people are saying and who they are. Are they your typical customers, or a smaller niche that doesn’t represent the norm? Are they valuable in other ways? After you know this, you will have a better understanding of participating. Some people may need to be screened out if they are simply inflammatory, but that needs to be established with terms and conditions or a disclaimer.

Beth:  Most of the time, if you've built your community, they will correct negatives or incorrect information. I remember hearing a presentation at a recent PBS Conference where the PBS engaged bloggers talked about this and how concerned they were about negative comments - but that community corrected those.   At first you won't get many comments - it takes time to build up a community of people who will comment. You should decide internally how you want to handle potentially negative comments and what your policy will be about moderating comments or not.

When I was in Australia last year, I met Priscilla Brice Weller who worked for a native rights group.  They have a blog and they moderate comments because they don't want to publish any racist comments. They have published their commenting policy on the site. I did an interview with her about this.

Here's more two round ups I did of nonprofit blogging policies:

http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/04/the-urge-to-edi.html

http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/04/nonprofit-blogg.html

Q: How do you control the content of comments to your blog posted by readers?

Emily:  It is perfectly acceptable to moderate the posts on your community or blog and to have a disclaimer that any inflammatory or inaccurate comments will be removed. HOWEVER, some issues that are negative do need to be allowed in order for participants to feel that the blog or community is addressing the real issues of the readers. A middle ground needs to be reached.

Beth:  Blogging platforms give options to moderate comments - review them and decide which ones to publish.

The bloggers who cover journalism and blogs by newspapers are great resources on this topic - particularly about whether or not to edit comments by readers:

http://powazek.com/posts/1063

http://eatsleeppublish.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-newspaper-curmudgeon-talking-points/

Q: How should you deal with coordinated efforts to disrupt your community (e.g. "comment bombing")?

Emily:  Again, it is acceptable to screen posts and have a disclaimer. While some activists are unreasonable and deserve to be screened out, it is important to address all issues in the groundswell so that readers can respect your voice. They need to know that you are aware of all players’ opinions and then they will take your cause or point of view more seriously than if you completely ignore the issue.

Beth:  Hmm, I've only really on the other side of planning and organizing "comment bombing" - not fighting it.  One thing to remember with comments that are off-topic or inappropriate: don't feed the trolls.

One of the best sites on digital activism advice is Mary Joyce's Digitactive - look through her archives to find her advice or email her.

Q: Should nonprofits have organizational Twitter accounts, or should employees keep their own personal accounts to tweet about the org & engage in conversation?

Emily: This depends. If individuals have different yet valuable perspectives, individual accounts are fine. Instead, if your organization has one particular cause that deserves one larger group of followers, a more “PR” motivated twitter account could make sense. You can have both if it makes sense too.

Beth:  You know, on Twitter, your organization should have a personality. That's how some companies have been successful on Twitter- like Frank at Comcast or Lionel at Dell.

Holly Ross's Twitter account is ntenhross - so it is branded as both her and her organization.  There is also a generic organization one - but a lot of NTEN conversations happen through Holly and other staff.

Here's my roundup of Twitter advice.

Q: What books do you recommend to help us get acquainted and use social media?

Emily:  Of course I need to recommend The Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. I also recommend Word of Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernowitz.

Beth:  Here's my little library - the second row has my picks for social media and networking. In particular, I would recommend Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everyone and The Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. Also CauseWired - which was recently published and is all about online fundraising using social networks.

BTW, I get offered a lot of free copies of books from different publishers and always ask for an addition one to giveaway in a contest on my blog for my readers - so keep an eye out for upcoming book giveaways.

Q: What is the best way to acquire or create a widget for a Facebook or MySpace page?

Emily:  It makes sense to work with partners such as Buddy Media, ClearSpring or Gigya, who are adept marketers and makers of widgets for many advertisers for both MySpace and Facebook.

Beth:  See http://nonprofitwidget.wikispaces.com/

Q: Also, what are techniques for finding social influencers and what are the ethical concerns/issues about contacting them for research purposes?

Emily:  The first place to work for influencers is within your own constituency, such as the most active volunteers or the most active readers of email messages. Beyond that, it can be valuable to work with a buzz marketing firm such as Nielsen BuzzMetrics or Cymfony to identify people in your arena who influence others. The only issue around contacting influencers is your value proposition. If you don’t provide them with a good incentive to talk to you, you are simply bothering them.

Beth:  Here's some step-by-steps for finding influential bloggers.

Q: Are there any specific ideas to use social media on a regional basis?

Emily:  here are already many grassroots communities and blogs that are regional. Search Google for them and become active commenters and provide assistance and information to the leaders of the blog or community to start understand the zeitgeist of the group.

Beth:  Participate in local meet ups of social media professionals or social good professionals that are happening different cities across the countries.  You can find event listings at sites like meetup.com  or upcoming.org. Some specific groups exist: social media club, netsquared, tweetup, etc.

Search for local bloggers or social media by geography - for example you can search by location for twitter users at twellow.com, local bloggers at all.top.

There is a type of blog called hyper local that covers neighborhood, city, or regional issues. You can find a listing of these blogs at placeblogger.com.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a social media addict and that I tend to think those around me – colleagues, friends and event clients- have a basis of understanding around the fundamentals of social media and basic online trends.

However, today’s webinar on Social Media for Social Good provided some great insight and answers to the questions and concerns the nonprofit technology industry as a whole still have about social and new media, which gave me a better idea on the areas that still need work or additional education to help the sector move forward in 2009. 

Throughout the session with Beth Kanter (who has now posted her notes to today's presentation) and Emily Riley, attendees on the line flooded in with questions and comments about the information and tips presented.

I think some of the top surprises and/or busted myths for me were:

1. Many people on the line were unfamiliar with some of the basic social media sites and tools used today. Flickr and Twitter, two tools we often write about and drop casually into conversations with nonprofits, were unknown to many people on the line.

2. We tend to take for granted that the youth are dominating the social media spaces, however according to Emily, the age numbers are quickly evening out and the demographic of 34+ is creating an increased presence in social media spaces (tell that to your boss the next time someone asks why you should invest in social media!)

3. Numerous examples were given around social media efforts made by marketers who are still trying to make social media campaigns that are fake. Despite the scandals and problems driven by falsified campaigns in the past, some marketers have yet to realize that the Web brings transparency and openness – two things that are very easy to recognize online (don’t think your constituents won’t notice if you’re content is fake...)

4. Participants were still interested in learning how to control behavior and UGC content like comments. The answer, of course, is that you can’t and shouldn’t try to control your constituents, but again this is a point some people still don’t quite grasp – you have to let go of control and the message to inspire, empower and move people.

5. Lastly, I realized how completely across the charts nonprofits are in skill level, knowledge and upstanding around social media. After every conference, webinar, blog post and book nonprofits have attended and read over the past year, there are still more questions than answers and fears than convictions around the Brave New World of social media.

Tomorrow, I’ll be posting the follow-up questions we didn’t get to today, but I’d love to hear from all the attendees (or ever Twitter #socialgood hashtag followers) what the overall insights were that you left with today.

So for all of you who attended: what were the zingers and “ah ha” moments for you? Any questions or information that surprised you?

As you have probably realized from some of my posts, being a good dad and husband is my top priority in life. Last night at bed time my 8-year old son pulled some of the books he no longer reads and some of the toys he no longer uses together to give to the Church so other kids who are less fortunate can get more this holiday season. Even if there is a part of him that is “just making more room” for what he hopes to get, the fact that he is thinking about others is a nice win for a dad.

I then went down to check my home email and look through the year end appeals that I am getting from organizations I have engaged with this year. There were many wonderful causes and wonderful appeals. Most were generic with greetings like “dear donor”, “dear friend” and “dear volunteer”.  One tried to be more personal, it read “Dear insert name”. As mistakes happen, I feel for that person and the organization (See Sally’s post on mistakes from earlier this year.) Some were customized around my interests and engagement through-out the year and were personalized with “Dear Tad” or “Mr. Druart” and one had “Dear Druart Family.”

The last one got me thinking about the best way to engage me as a donor this season and a topic that has been prevalent in this year’s nonprofit donor research – knowing your constituents better. 

A quick review – the Wired Wealthy Research showed most causes were not making the best possible use of their Web and email efforts to connect with important donors. Similarly,  according to initial findings from a new survey initiated by Bank of America, nearly 60% of wealthy households who stopped giving to a charitable organization attributed their change in philanthropic behavior to "no longer feeling connected to the organization."

There is a famous holiday song that has as part of the lyric “Do you hear what I hear?” In this holiday/year-end giving season what I hear from these donors is that we canal do more to connect with them.

Given the economy and competition for resources and dollars, it seems that hearing and knowing your best supporters – donors, volunteers, advocates and participants – is more important than ever.

As you’re sharing information, making appeals or updating your constituents over the coming weeks ands months here’s a few ideas to keep in mind:
1) Build in a feedback loop or opportunity to gather intelligence on your most important people resources (don’t just ask for money, ask for insight and ideas),
2) Listen to what those donors and other supporters are telling you and work that into your on-going and future campaigns,
3) Be open to changing the way you do things to better serve their needs for information and engagement,
4) Use the technology available to segment your constituents based on their needs/wants then match that to your needs (if they help you create the engagement they are more likely to participate).

Next year, I expect to receive an email solicitation that reads in part:

“Dear Tad,

Thank you and Nancy for the generous gift in June. We also enjoyed having you participate in our run last August. As you, Nancy and the kids plan for your holiday giving, I hope you’ll consider expanding your support to include…”

The more you know and engage me the harder is it to say “no.”   If you get my son or daughter to do the ask then you’re golden, but that’s another post.