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News for May 2009

27 May 2009

Facing Facebook, New Seminar on July 1, 2009

I thought about calling it "How Not to be Facebook's Tool", but that's only part of the message in our new workshop: Facing Facebook: Achieving Meaningful Success in Online Social Networks. Nonprofits have been using Facebook long enough for at least some of the hype to wear off. (I'm grateful for the Washington Post article on how poorly Facebook Causes has worked for most organizations.) The workshop will cover clear, fact-based criteria for participating in Facebook, equally clear objectives and means of evaluation, and a range of straightforward strategies and ways to develop new ones. The workshop will be held live, online, on July 1, 2009. Posted: 5/27/09; 5:06:25 PM #

26 May 2009

Word of Mouth Metrics GuideBook, A Work in Progress

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association's Word of Mouth Metrics GuideBook (32 page PDF) is a rough work in progress - the collaborators on the document have yet to add sections on Sentiment Analysis, Overall ROI, and Ratings & Reviews - but it's worth your time as it stands. (I say this despite its unfortunate use of that dreadful "best practices" phrase.) The guide is basically a survey of the field, looking at the types of metrics available (a dangerous notion right there), key considerations for their use (absolutely essential), and some examples. It's organized according to the Word of Mouth Terminology Framework (which I also recommend), and currently includes sections on advocacy measurement, conversation volume & share, cost per conversion, reach, the influencer factor, cost deflection, and the value of a conversation. Posted: 5/26/09; 5:44:41 PM #

The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online

I don't see eye-to-eye with Kevin Kelly on everything, but when it comes to matters relating to network phenomena, he has a wonderful analytical mind. In his recent article for Wired - The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online - he looks at four increasingly deep dynamics of socialized resources (sharing, cooperation, collaboration, and collectivism) and describes what's happening on line in each. Like many of the best thinkers on the topic, he knows there isn't a "zero-sum trade-off between free-market individualism and centralized authority". Posted: 5/26/09; 5:30:32 PM #

Great Websites are Boring to Manage

I would love to find a reliable, systematic way to discover the real driving purposes behind many websites: pleasing the board of directors, winning design awards, jockying for position within the organization, fun and self-expression for staff, and so forth. While I doubt I'll ever be able to discover that in a systematic fashion, at least I have people like Gerry McGovern to point to. He says it bluntly: Great websites are boring to manage. Posted: 5/26/09; 5:24:46 PM #

Building Resilience in Rural Communities

The University of Queensland and University of Southern Queensland collaborated on a three year research project on models of personal and community resilience that enhance psychological wellness in the Stanthorpe community. Among the products of that work is a toolkit on Building Resilience in Rural Communities (52 page PDF). I have been criticized recently for encouraging nonprofits to focus on social capital during hard times, but that's exactly what this toolkit focuses on as well. Resilience in this toolkit refers to the capacity of an individual or community to cope with stress, overcome adversity or adapt positively to change. The toolkit offers literature, methods, case studies and other tools in eleven categories: Social Networks and Support, Positive Outlook, Learning, Early Experience, Environment and Lifestyle, Infrastructure and Support Services, Sense of Purpose, Diverse and Innovative Economy, Embracing Differences, Beliefs, and Leadership. Posted: 5/26/09; 5:21:02 PM #

Draft Agenda for Giving and Volunteering Research Conference 2009

The draft agenda for the Giving and Volunteering Research Conference 2009 (a 2 page PDF, for inexplicable reasons) is full of intriguing topics, including: the health benefits of volunteering, deservingness and empathy in a charity dictator game, the impact of the German church tax on private charitable contributions, volunteers as managers and coordinators, alternative volunteering paradigms, and food scavenging as an alternative to institutional welfare. Posted: 5/26/09; 4:36:57 PM #

20 May 2009

Integrated Program Evaluation Seminar Now Available On-Demand

Everyone is being asked to evaluate their work these days, but for many of us that seems like an extra task, an additional line item, yet another consultant. It doesn't have to be that way. In the latest addition to our catalog of on-demand seminars, we're offering a two-part workshop entitled Integrated Program Evaluation: An Affordable Model for Better Metrics, Improvement, and Accountability. Like most of our seminars, the material is not light weight. We touch on peer networks, logic models, natural evaluation points, worklogs, self-documentation, and more. In order to help support you with applying the learning, the workshop comes with a thirty minute consultation. Posted: 5/20/09; 12:23:28 PM #

18 May 2009

Listening Before Telling

So much communication practice in civil society falls prey to the disease of Scaling Up Talking. Thus I would read Ricardo Ramirez and Wendy Quarry's forthcoming book Communication for Another Development: Listening before Telling, purely on the strength of the title. They base their ideas about communication on the development principles first laid out by the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation: needs-oriented, endogenous, self-reliant, ecologically sound, and based on structural transformation. I invite you to ask this question of all your communication programs: Do you listen before telling? Posted: 5/18/09; 6:07:55 PM #

Survival Strategies for the Arts

It's John Killacky's emphasis on leveraging social capital that really hooked me on his Survival Strategies for the Arts, in the latest issue of Blue Avocado. Of his ten ideas, my favorites included these: (2) Place matters, (3) Invite the public in, (4) Let audiences co-author meaning, (8) Risk failing, (9) Have the Conversation, and (10) Become a cultural citizen. He adds a postscript on what audiences can do, although given his approach I really wonder whether that word - "audience" - oughtn't be in quotes. Posted: 5/18/09; 5:56:48 PM #

Social Strategies & Supporting Tactics for Viral Campaigns

When I talk to organizations about "viral" strategies, I consistently get the impression that what people want is to take their existing messages and somehow "make" them go viral. Sometimes they realize that they need different messages. Rarely do they realize how much they have to invest in understanding their stakeholders and in strengthening the capacity of those stakeholders to be communicators. In Social Strategies & Supporting Tactics for Viral Campaigns, Sverre Sjothun addresses several of these issues. I particularly like how, if you go with the epidemiological metaphor, you need a population of healthy hosts in order to really spread a virus. What he doesn't emphasize is how that population needs to be richly connected. Just as swine-flu won't spread if everyone stays in their homes, messages won't spread if people aren't talking to each other. We seem to prefer to take time crafting images than nurturing those connections. What a waste! Posted: 5/18/09; 12:49:56 PM #

At the Intersection: Midwives of Nonprofit Technology
	Before the late nineties, it took genuine vision to to see the potential that information and communication technology had for civil society. In At the Intersection: Midwives of Nonprofit Technology, Jillaine Smith asks for your recollections of the people who had such vision. Posted: 5/18/09; 9:26:31 AM #

13 May 2009

Seminar on Building a Blog Network, June 24, 2009

Whether they do it through a social network, or through a microblog like Twitter, or through a traditional weblog service, a great many of your stakeholders are either current or potential authors whose voice could be lent to your cause. In my upcoming workshop - Building a Blog Network: Scaling Up Your Organizational Reach Through the Voices of Your Community - I'll show you the three key steps needed to tap the social capital in your communities of interest. With budgets tight, now is the time to leverage all the resources we can find. Posted: 5/13/09; 6:12:19 PM #

12 May 2009

I'm Wearing Bright Yellow Undies: How We Make Stuff Up When Communicating Online

They say that one of the great strengths of radio as a medium lies in how much it leaves to the imagination of the listener. Our minds are story-telling machines and, when we want to hear a story, leaving things to the power of those machines really works. But what if instead of making up a story, we want to understand someone or be understood? Online communication is a lot like radio, except in many cases it leaves even more to the imagination. That gets us all in trouble. Sonia Lyris explores all this in her charmingly quirky article entitled I'm Wearing Bright Yellow Undies: How We Make Stuff Up When Communicating Online. Posted: 5/12/09; 3:37:39 PM #

11 May 2009

Strengthening Democracy, Increasing Opportunities: Impacts of Advocacy, Organizing and Civic Engagement in North Carolina

The second Grantmaking for Community Impact report has been released, examining the results of advocacy and lobbying spending by organizations in North Carolina. The evidence is pretty strong that such spending is very effective in leveraging resources for the issues that concern the organizations involved. The authors of the report fully concede the limits of their methodology, in that we can't really know how much any particular activity contributed to the policy or funding changes claimed for it. (Nor can we know whether those policies would have happened anyway; I've been around plenty of organizations that claimed credit for things that happened simply because the political climate was ready for it.) Their report claims that "For every dollar invested in their advocacy and organizing work, the groups garnered $89 in benefits for North Carolina communities." Even if they are off by an order of magnitude, that's a very strong case for bringing such spending into balance with direct service spending. Posted: 5/11/09; 9:37:24 PM #

Nonprofit Social Network Survey

I have several concerns about NTEN's recent Nonprofit Social Network Survey (17 page PDF), although I nevertheless recommend that you take a look at it. (1) The methodology section is one-sentence long, doesn't describe its sampling methodology, but nevertheless asserts a 95% confidence in its results. If this is online self-selection, as many of our own surveys have been, then the overall numbers are of less interest that the comparison between subsectors and the cross-tabulations. (2) I haven't been able to find a clear definition of "social network" in the report and it's not made clear whether there was one in the survey. I am under the impression it means any kind of online community or discussions, except for those conducted across sites, such as blog networks. But I'm not sure. Still, I can't help but be intrigued. For example, "not enough money" is a fairly common reason to not pursue social networking, but "having more money" is rarely cited as a way to do it better by those who are already doing it. What does that mean? I really want to know! Posted: 5/11/09; 9:28:27 PM #

Impact Assessment of ICT-for-Development Projects: A Compendium of Approaches

In an effort to promote better and more frequent evaluation of ICT for development projects, the Institute for Development Policy and Management has published Impact Assessment of ICT-for-Development Projects: A Compendium of Approaches (cover page for 160 page PDF). This substantial report covers the strengths, weaknesses, methods, variants and references for 11 different overarching frameworks of evaluation, which they enumerate as follows: (1) Cost-Benefit Analysis, (2) Project Goals, (3) Communications-for-Development, (4) Capabilities, (5) Livelihoods, (6) Information Economics, (7) Information Mapping, (8) Cultural-Institutional, (9) Enterprise, (10) Gender, and (11) Telecentres. On top of this, it includes an annotated bibliography of impact assessment resources including ones that are specific to certain disciplines, issues, and sectors. This is an extraordinary contribution to the field. Posted: 5/11/09; 6:34:21 PM #

Survival of the Fittest Tag

My old company Social Ecology supported tagging and folksonomies in its original intranet product as far back as 1999 and my fascination with emergent taxonomies goes back even farther. In this month's issue of First Monday, Alexis Wichowski takes an evolutionary approach to the topic in Survival of the Fittest Tag: Folksonomies, Findability, and the Evolution of Information Organization. I like the approach, particularly his use of findability as the selective pressure. This ecological and evolutionary approach is one way of bridging the gap between the chaos of random keywords and the rigidity of restricted vocabularies. Posted: 5/11/09; 7:59:06 AM #

6 May 2009

Practical Collaboration Seminar Now Available On Demand

We often make collaboration much harder than it needs to be. Up front, we think we have to agree on huge abstract concepts, whereas what we really need to agree on is protocols and procedures. As soon as we get online, we think the key to collaboration is the right all-encompassing tool, but each person has their favorites. I address these and other issues in the latest addition to our on-demand seminar catalog - Practical Collaboration: Working Together in the Age of Networks and Perpetual Connectivity. As with all of our on-demand workshops, this one comes with a one-on-one consultation, to help address your specific collaboration challenges. Posted: 5/6/09; 4:08:52 PM #

5 May 2009

Virtual Change: Indicators for Assessing the Impact of ICTs in Development

Most of the time, we really don't know how well we're doing. One important reason for this is that, whether we are activists or business people, we tend to invest more in the tools for changing the world than in the tools for understanding it. That's why I celebrate when I read publications such as this latest one from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations: Virtual Change: Indicators for Assessing the Impact of ICTs in Development (50 page PDF). The report identifies 18 indicators which are organized into six well-conceived categories. Evaluation methodologies are explored for each of them. I highly recommend that you read this report if you are in any way involved in using ICT in social change. To pique your interest, here are their 18 indicators: (1) The ICTs are increasingly used for dialogue and debate. (2) Policy and programme knowledge is increasingly communicated through the ICTs. (3) There are increased levels of access to the ICT processes. (4) The opinions and ideas expressed through ICT channels are increasingly those of the people most affected by development issues in any given context. (5) The people most affected by development issues in any given context increasingly dominate the physical use of the ICTs. (6) Technical experts on ICT for development increasingly respond to and implement the technical requirements voiced by those most affected. (7) A minimum of 40 percent of the people involved in the management are directly affected by the development issues that the ICTs being mobilized are designed to address. (8) There are x (the number inserted here depends on the scale and nature of the programme being evaluated) examples in the last 12 months of the use of the ICTs for engaging people directly affected by development issues in overall programme management and/or policy development. (9) The ICTs are increasingly used to draw relationships between different development issues. (10) The ICTs are increasingly used as a communication platform to identify and negotiate the specific strategic and technical support that development organizations require. (11) The ICTs are increasingly used as the source for the core information needed to better inform individual development activities. (12) The ICTs are increasingly used as the gathering point for like-focused organizations and groups. (13) The ICTs are increasingly used to highlight emerging symbols and images related to action on the development issue(s) in question. (14) The ICTs are increasingly used to multiply strong symbols and/or images that are emerging from the struggle. (15) The ICTs are increasingly used to both convey meaning and deepen debate and dialogue through the symbols and images presented. (16) The ICTs are increasingly used to build working strategic and/or operational partnerships with other organizations that have similar vested interests. (17) The ICTs are increasingly used to participate in networks of like-focused organizations. (18) The ICTs are increasingly used to both provide support to others involved in compatible action and to receive support from such organizations. Posted: 5/5/09; 5:51:37 PM #

Five Clues That Your Project is Headed for Trouble

Are you worried about funding drying up for the work you do? Fortunately, budget cuts are not as random as they appear and there are plenty of early warning signs. Writing in Computer World, with lessons that apply universally to any project, Paul Glen offers Five Clues That Your Project is Headed for Trouble: (1) Management direction is inconsistent or missing. (2) Project management and business management seem disconnected. (3) The team lacks a commitment to clearly articulated and commonly understood goals. (4) Team members don't listen to one another. (5) The team is in a state of discord. Posted: 5/5/09; 5:33:27 PM #

Nonprofits Need to Know Their Givers Better

I feel like a lot of organizations respond to the message to "scale up listening" with a shrug and think to themselves that listening is an abstract value that they cannot afford. The evidence says otherwise. In Nonprofits Need to Know Their Givers Better, Todd Cohen and Adrian Sargeant point out how increasing donor retention by just 10% can double the lifetime return of your fundraising list. Posted: 5/5/09; 5:29:53 PM #

What's the Point of a Nonprofit Board, Anyway?

I have long been concerned that the corporate structure of most nonprofit organizations, entrenched as a result of the tax code in the U.S. and other countries, does more harm than good. Witness the incredible number of consultants who earn a good living (as I once did) addressing issues that arise from board-staff relations. Given my point of view, it's really great to see someone like Jan Masaoka offer a positive alternative in her latest piece at Blue Avocado: What's the Point of a Nonprofit Board, Anyway? Posted: 5/5/09; 5:22:35 PM #

How To Live Blog (Or Twitter) An Event Effectively

I watched a number of my friends and colleagues cover the Nonprofit Technology Conference last week on their blogs and elswhere. They are all better at this than I am. Thus I appreciate Rohit Bhargava's ten guidelines for How To Live Blog (Or Twitter) An Event Effectively. He expands on each of these: (1) Have a purpose. (2) Focus on the 1st take. (3) Create realistic targets. (4) Publish nuggets, not manifestos. (5) Have a point of view. (6) Share the real pulse of the event. (7) Offer an insider perspective. (8) Get help on content promotion. (9) Represent the virtual attendees. (10) Do a recap. Posted: 5/5/09; 5:19:18 PM #

Merck Published Fake Journal

As the publisher of The Journal of Networks and Civil Society and The Journal of Information Technology in Social Change, we've been thinking a lot about the business model for future editions of these journals. One of the models we will not be considering is the one used by high profile publisher Elsevier. Seems like Merck paid them to publish an entirely fake academic journal to support their pharmaceuticals. Unfortunately, whether it's in academic journals or in professional conferences, most of the time such sponsorship and influence isn't nearly this obvious. Posted: 5/5/09; 8:23:02 AM #