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News for August 2009
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 27 August 2009 |
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26 August 2009 |
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| Why You Need To Stop Talking And Start Listening |
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It was so satisfying to spend a half hour on the phone today with an organization whose communication leadership had all taken my Facing Facebook workshop. They have a 180 staff and a vast knowledge base and yet they are prepared to take stock and build their listening systems up before they just start pushing content out into social media channels. It was inspiring. So was Nick O'Neill's article on Why You Need To Stop Talking And Start Listening. The best part is his explanation of why it's so critically important to listen, as an organization. He also offers five relatively modest ways to improve your social media listening skills: (1) Write a response post and link back. (2) Reply regularly, don't just retweet. (3) Send an email or even pick up the phone. (4) Post a thoughtful blog comment. (5) Use search tools to find new people.
Posted: 8/26/09; 5:57:00 PM # |
| Web of Change 2009 Agenda |
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The agenda from this year's upcoming Web of Change gathering is one of the best I've seen at any event in the years I've been working in new media and civil society. The topics are genuinely strategic and uniformly refuse to pander to the lowest common denominator. (I just wish I could be there this year. But you can still go. They may even have a few tuition grants left!) A few choice bits: What if you had 100 internet staffers in your organization? (Do you know how you would use them?) Can we go beyond fixing one organization at a time? Reaching Beyond the "Supporter as ATM" Online Fundraising Model. Forget the "elevator pitch." What's your campaign's "lightning message"? Do you have a mindshifting narrative that lights a spark for people and moves them to action? The Open Campaign Revolution.
Posted: 8/26/09; 5:44:46 PM # |
| Catalytic Philanthropy: Four Practices |
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Writing in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Mark Kramer uses the term Catalytic Philanthropy to describe a combination of four practices: (1) taking responsibility for achieving results, (2) mobilizing a campaign for change, (3) using all available tools (including corporate resources, investment capital, lobbying, advocacy and litigation), and (4) creating actionable knowledge.
Posted: 8/26/09; 5:33:57 PM # |
| Idealist's Mozilla Day of Service Page |
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I really like how Idealist has packed their Mozilla Day of Service page with a dozen different ways to promote the event. (They could use better web page titles though.) It's a nice example of treating your stakeholders as people with their own voices, who need your media in a form that is useful to them, in the context of the tools they use and the communities of which they are a part.
Posted: 8/26/09; 5:18:53 PM # |
| Save the Internet, Save the World |
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In Save the Internet, Save the World Sheldon Mains makes the case for all civil society organizations concerning themselves with Internet access. He doesn't make this comparison, but tens of thousands of nonprofit organizations concern themselves with postal rates. This is the same issue only much, much larger. It's no longer just about whether you can reach your stakeholders, but about whether they can reach you, each other, and the people and organizations they need to reach to be empowered in our society.
Posted: 8/26/09; 5:15:33 PM # |
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17 August 2009 |
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| Knowledge Sharing Methods Wiki |
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The Knowledge Sharing Toolkit of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and the KM4Dev Community, is a wiki with great promise, much of it already realized. It's most important contribution, in my opinion, is the equal weight it places on tools and methods. Often, when we look at lists of tools, we are sucked into one piece of software or a web-based application or one community after another, without context or strategy. What this site calls "methods" is the actual processes and practices used by groups, arguably the very actions for which the tools are meant to be supportive (rather than central). I encourage you to use and contribute to their Knowledge Sharing Methods collection, which already includes solid introductions to things like Peer Assists, Speed Geeking, the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving, Ritual Dissent, Outcome Mapping, and more.
Posted: 8/17/09; 5:37:39 PM # |
| Civil Society in the Age of Obama |
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For the last few months, I've been considering the need for a website that tackles the topic of civil society in the age of Barack Obama. It's an intriguing topic. I worry that the staff and leadership of our organizations will embrace the romance, employment, and access provided by a Democratic administration. I worry that Obama is not so different from Bush, now that he is in office. I worry that we will not provide the pressure he needs to do the right thing. But for all my concerns, I do think Obama will be good for our sector
I'm pleased to see that Jon Van Til has in fact started such a blog, appropriately entitled Civil Society in the Age of Obama. It's initial contributors are drawn from two groups of his students and he has a plan for continued publication. I haven't read everything there yet, but at this point I can recommend Van Til's opening article/speech and the piece on national service.
Posted: 8/17/09; 5:29:41 PM # |
| Principles that Matter: Sustaining Software Innovation from the Client to the Web |
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Funders and pundits in the nonprofit sector have often approached innovation as if it were a matter of keeping up with the cool kids. We say something is "innovative" if it gets a lot of votes in an online poll. Or worse, we say it's innovative when it uses lots of the latest buzzwords. Those are both like treating innovation as though it were a high school popularity contest. Because we're all trying to guess what will attract votes, what will be cool, one of the consequences is that we fail to create the conditions that foster innovation in the first place and in many cases we actually squelch it.
In Principles that Matter: Sustaining Software Innovation from the Client to the Web, Marco Iansiti explores the conditions that give rise to software innovation in particular. (Most of these principles apply directly to our work, not even considering how much nonprofit innovation these days actually is software related social innovation in the first place.) Two important themes (to paraphrase from the paper): (1) Innovation and growth are dependent on promoting a thriving ecosystem of complementary and interdependent products. (2) The competitive principles of choice, opportunity, and interoperability is important, because of the increased variety of possible combinations and the increased interdependency they deliver. In our sector, these insights are not getting the funding and attention they deserve.
Posted: 8/17/09; 5:18:03 PM # |
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7 August 2009 |
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| Seminar Testimonials |
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Please forgive the blatant self-promotion, but I wanted to share with you something that just made my day, if not my whole week. (We've had a heat wave here that disrupted work badly. I've been struggling with cluster headaches. And a key server of ours took us down for a while.) My colleague pulled together a collection of testimonials from our seminar participants. It was really wonderful to read them. (Thank you, Christine.) As a lifelong learner myself, it's more than just affirming to read this - it grounds me in my own studies. Maybe some of it will do the same for you, but if not then scroll to the top of the page for our calendar of upcoming live workshops.
Posted: 8/7/09; 5:54:19 PM # |
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6 August 2009 |
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| On Sept. 16, Seminar on Building Trust Online with Donors, Activists, and the Media |
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As H.L. Mencken said, "It is mutual trust, more than mutual interest that holds human associations together." Survey after survey shows the critical role that civil society plays in maintaining this web of trust. And we don't need surveys to tell us that, in this age of peer to peer communication and organizational transparency, we depend on the trust of our stakeholders more than ever. Fortunately, trust building is something we can get good at, something that we can scale up - in our fundraising, volunteer management, and communication. I'll be teaching a seminar on this topic on September 16, 2009, entitled The Golden Goose: Building Trust Online with Donors, Activists, and the Media. I'll be teaching ways to treat trust building as a craft, with metrics and checklists, strategies and tactics.
Posted: 8/6/09; 5:59:58 PM # |
| Our Theory of Change by ONE Northwest |
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Every organization involved in social change work can learn from an internal planning document recently published by ONE Northwest: Our Theory of Change. If you are familiar with recent models for planning in civil society, you'll understand that "theory of change" is a term of art referring to the causal assumptions you are making about how your work affects the ultimate changes you're seeking in society. ONE Northwest is an ICT focused organization that "delivers innovative tools and strategies" to environmental organizations.
If you note the quoted phrase about ONE Northwest, you'll get a sense of the influence of their theory of change. We all pay lip service to the notion that it's communication that matters, rather than the technology itself. But ONE Northwest has embraced that notion at every level of their work. Their theory of change helps them see how to do this by linking their day to day work to client outcomes, policy outcomes, and ultimately societal outcomes. I'm convinced we can all benefit from this kind of rigor.
Posted: 8/6/09; 5:21:28 PM # |
| The Just Enough Planning Guide |
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The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation have funded the release of The Just Enough Planning Guide. That phrase - "just enough" - is bound to appeal to many of the thousands of organizations that want to think strategically, but don't believe they have the time to do so. I recommend you head straight to the download section, where the Just Enough Planning Guide (44 page PDF) itself is available for free. Then check out their resource center and online planning tool.
Posted: 8/6/09; 5:18:27 PM # |
| Revisiting the Age of Enlightenment from a Collective Decision Making Systems Perspective |
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I've long been interested in the characteristics of systems that nurture innovation. Some years back, I recommended to the (now defunct) Innovation Funders Network that they take a systems approach to their work, rather than a cream skimming, reward-the-winner approach. So, it's with great delight that I read Revisiting the Age of Enlightenment from a Collective Decision Making Systems Perspective by Marko Rodriguez and Jennifer Watkins in First Monday.
The authors examine one of the most exciting periods of innovation in world history, with a particular focus on social and political ideas. They use the tools of systems analysis to do so, including optimal decision making groups and the interactions of self-interested actors. They propose that technology enabled social Algorithms can play an important role in helping us realize the ideals of the Enlightenment. I encourage anyone interested in systems solutions and the capacity-building of entire communities of practice to closely examine these ideas.
Posted: 8/6/09; 5:14:08 PM # |
| Search for Common Ground: Resources for Conflict Resolution, Prevention, and Transformation |
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A close colleague of mine is attending a conflict deescalation course tomorrow and so I found myself looking at some related resources. (I am particularly interested in systems solutions that provide for conflict as a normal and supportable interaction that doesn't jeopardize basic relationships and similar structural solutions that prevent differences from becoming conflicts in the first place.) I came across the resources page for Search for Common Ground. Check out their suggested readings, resource guides, and their material on cooperative problem solving.
Posted: 8/6/09; 5:10:00 PM # |
| Building a Nonprofit Website on a Shoe-String Budget |
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Care2 has been building a solid blog under the Frogloop brand. The latest piece, by Kevin Gilnack is on Building a Nonprofit Website on a Shoe-String Budget. What I like about this piece is that it goes a little deeper than just recommending the obvious free and low-cost solutions. I don't like all his recommendations, but I mostly like the questions he asks. I'm looking forward to part 2 of this piece and I hope he addresses two costs missing from this first installment: exit costs and labor costs related to website development.
Posted: 8/6/09; 5:06:22 PM # |
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