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| The Machinery of Hope: Inside the Grass-roots Field Operation of Barack Obama |
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I did a lot of traditional community organizing when I was younger and nowadays I do a lot of teaching about the promise of online communication for large scale revitalization of the practice. Tim Dickinson in the Rolling Stone has written a great article entitled The Machinery of Hope: Inside the Grass-roots Field Operation of Barack Obama. Although it definitely reflects their endorsement of Obama, it's nevertheless a very solid look at how that campaign is synthesizing the best face to face organizing techniques with the best online communication practices. I would have been interested in more numbers and fewer stories, but this is journalism, not research. Given the way the Howard Dean campaign got dissected after the last presidential race, we'll see the detailed numbers soon enough. Of course, if we're lucky, the staff responsible for these practices will be in government, not starting new civil society consulting firms.
Posted: 4/28/08; 12:33:08 PM # |
| Mission Over Membership in Online Advocacy |
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I recall, very early in my career, being shocked by the newsletter of another organization in which they claimed to have been working on a legislative issue on which I had been a lead consumer lobbyist. I had never once seen them in the legislature. As it turns out, they had been canvassing on the subject, which they considered to be a form of advocacy work. It didn't help that they had asked me for reprint permission on our own article about this campaign and then created the piece I was reading by substituting their organization's name for ours.
So, it's probably obvious why I was delighted to read Charles Lenchner's piece on Mission Over Membership in Online Advocacy in the NTEN blog. He offers a solid criticism of the lack of integrity of list building efforts masquerading as real advocacy work. It's a real problem online these days and I hope this encourages organizations to find a way to be more honest. If not, maybe we should consider some sort of Hall of Shame.
Posted: 4/28/08; 12:25:24 PM # |
| Six Signs of Nonprofit Decline |
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Many ailing nonprofits hang on for far too long, tying up passion and resources and generating burnout and resentment. Although there is no magic formula for how long to wait for a turnaround, the Fieldstone Alliance's list of the Six Signs of Nonprofit Decline is a good place to start: (1) Loss of all or a significant portion of support from a key funding source. (2) “Chasing dollars” syndrome. (3) Sudden and dramatic expansion of services. (4) Falling behind on financial obligations. (5) Consistently unable to meet service and financial projections. (6) Departure of key board and staff.
Posted: 4/28/08; 11:02:56 AM # |
| NTC 2008 Session Material |
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One of the best things about a good conference is the way in which participants return to their work as teachers of the material they just learned. Access to session materials can help with that. NTEN is hosting the materials from the 2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference and they are worth a good thirty minutes of browsing to see what may be of use to you. I find the fifteen tags they've used to flag different session topics to be the most useful interface: Advocacy, Analysis, Budget, Collaboration, Community, Email, Infrastructure, Integration/APIs, International, Open Source, Planning, Policy, Tools, Web2.0, and Webmasters.
Posted: 4/28/08; 10:57:29 AM # |
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Opinions and observations by Michael Gilbert unless otherwise noted.
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