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For NONPROFIT Fundraisers: How to turn Twitter into dollars!
Join us for a Webinar on March 24

Space is limited.Reserve your Webinar seat now at:https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/388164328

Do you have Twitter-jitters? Are you afraid to use it because you haven't a clue about how it can expand your fundraising universe?

Are you a Twitter-fritter? Do you waste your words on Twitter because you don't know how to use it to dynamize your fundraising?

Are you a Twitter-quitter? Have you already given up on it because you never figured out how to maximize its power for fundraising?

Well, this webinar is designed for YOU! It takes ALL of the mystery out of Twitter. It will show you how to "fire up" your Twitter account. It will explore powerful strategies you can use to find potential donors and lead them to your "Selling Space."

Recommended for Twitter virgins, novices, and everyone else. Presenters: Dr. Stephen L. Goldstein & Brian Ross Lee

Title:
For NONPROFIT Fundraisers: How to turn Twitter into dollars!
Date:
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Time:
11:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT
After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.
System RequirementsPC-based attendeesRequired: Windows® 7, Vista, XP, 2003 Server or 2000
Macintosh®-based attendeesRequired: Mac OS® X 10.4.11 (Tiger®) or newer

You’re a small, scrappy social change organization. You crowdsource.  [Yeah, yeah, we know. It’s cheaper. Diversity solves problems faster. There is greater wisdom in numbers. Engagement builds collaboration and collaboration brings in money and volunteers.] But that’s not all. Crowdsourcing also turns Establishment philanthropy on its ear. “There’s not a lot of openness in traditional philanthropy,” Nonprofit Technology Network’s Holly Ross told the crowd that came to hear her, Beth Kanter, Netsquared’s Amy Sample Ward, video consultant David J. Neff and the Case Foundation’s Kari Saratovsky talk about disruptive change in the sector. Part of SxSW’s Crowdsourcing Innovative Social Change panel, Ross added: “Crowdsourcing is an ethos that the nonprofit industry needs to adopt to better itself.”

To be sure, open philanthropy – the movement for more open collaboration and transparency in the giving sector – is an urgent mission by itself. Thanks to the Web’s ability to produce ever-faster and larger outpourings of free information, knowledge is no longer scarce and sharing is becoming the most efficient approach to social problem-solving. [So what are some of the better examples of high-impact crowdsourcing? Here’s the panel’s short list, mostly of mobile startups. [Kanter asked her considerable social network back in January to start aggregating examples; SxSW attendees added some examples on the spot.]

• Open Green Map, offered up by Ross, helps communities map their eco-friendly spots, whether it’s a bike rack or a solar-heated apartment complex or a public herb garden. Using this open source collaborative platform, the Manhattan-based nonprofit has so far engaged more than 600 communities in 55 countries in creating citizen maps to catalyze new environmental projects, large and small. The maps are made by community members. OGM helps.
• NPR’s online community manager Andy Carvin cited Project NOAH. The acronym stands for Networked Organisms and Habitats. NOAH, now in beta, is a free iPhone application that helps people discover their local plants and animals and document them onto a common tech platform for review by research groups and others. In this way, citizen scientists can help to track new species or changes in the environment.
• Carvin also mentioned Open Street Map, a collaborative project to create a free, editable map of the world with the help of people using data from portable GPS devices. OSM has been used recently by disaster/crisis relief organizations to share such information as which roads are accessible and which are blocked in the wake of disasters or civil strife. [Ushahidi, another example, enables users to crowdsource crisis information that is then used to make dynamic, real-time maps of public health outbreaks, street rioting, food drops and emergency facilities during crisis situations.]
• The UpTake is a Minnesota-based citizen journalist nonprofit that crowdsources the news and helps editors filter hours of raw videotape for the best clips. [Think C-SPAN meets Ghost Hunters meets CNN’s iReport.] Everything is time-stamped; the UpTake’s profile increased during the disputed 2008 U.S. Senate election in Minnesota. [UpTake provided full coverage of the recount process, earning it plaudits for accuracy from established and online news organizations.]
• Seattle Free School, suggested by Ward, uses social media to organize classes and teach students. “The owners found each other via social media and the project was born from the interaction,” Ward said. “This is ‘for the community by the community’ education and engages the best local experts to share their knowledge and experience for free.”
• Invisible People, an nonprofit that uses video storytelling to help de-stigmatize homeless people. “Our hope is that you’ll get mad enough to do something,” its Website reads. Invisible People uses crowdsourcing to select the best stories and interviews.

There are numerous other examples, but what are the lessons that can be shared from them?

Among the takeaways:

• Mix it up. Crowd-sourcing that harvests input from both experts and non-experts seems to work best for groups with a lot of in-house knowledge, said Saratovsky. “We do it this way [at Case] so it doesn’t become simply a popularity contest,” she said. Ross said Free Range Studios’ Youtopia project is another example of targeted crowdsourcing. Free Range decided to give away $30,000 worth of free consulting to the most innovative social change groups, and used the crowd to help staff narrow the field to 20 finalists. Ward urged attendees to differentiate between an open, unvetted “crowd” and a group’s “community” crowd—suggesting that tapping into an organization’s social network is a more strategic and manageable form of crowdsourcing for some initiatives.
• Small organizations with skimpy budgets have the most to gain. Said Ross: “It’s about realizing that if I want to create the most value for my cause and organization, then that value is going to come from beyond me. As a nonprofit, I am a gardener in the process.” Added Kanter: “An expert now is someone with a great network. Crowd-sourcing lets you tap into a wider range of talent and skills than you may have inside your organization.”
• Start slowly. “You can’t go from nothing to a lightbulb overnight,” said Ward. Use crowds to help you innovate in iterative steps over time.
• Don’t expect miracles.“Crowdsourcing is just another shiny object unless you can tie it to outcomes,” Kanter said. “Millions of crowd-sourced ideas don’t produce anything.” Be very clear about what you want the crowd to help you achieve and deliver before you get started, then be able to measure the impact of those efforts.
• Make it fun and keep it simple. “People don’t want to do a lot of heavy lifting but they do want to do good,” said Ward. At its best, crowd-sourcing can be a form of civic engagement. At its worst, it can be exploitative. Be careful that you don’t ask crowds for too much.

Okay, dear readers. Now it’s your turn. How do you use crowdsourcing and what lessons can you share with the crowd?

For more on the panel, see a summary of its presentation on slideshare.

Marcia Stepanek is Founding Editor-in-Chief and President, News and Information, for Contribute Media, a New York-based magazine, Web site, and conference series about the new people and ideas of giving. She is the publisher of Cause Global, an acclaimed new blog about the use of digital media for social change. She also serves as moderator and producer of New Conversations for Change, Contribute’s forum series highlighting social entrepreneurs and new trends in philanthropy.

Raise More Money with Social Media NOW! You Don't Have to Cultivate Donors Forever
Join us for a Webinar on March 17

Space is limited.Reserve your Webinar seat now at:https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/911628680

The buzz about using social media for fundraising is WAIT and be patient. Sometime in the future, ask for a donation. But the same people who tell you to wait can't tell you exactly when the time will be right. In the meantime, you could be out of business. The fact is: You DON'T have to wait forever to approach potential donors to support your cause. You just need to use 7 powerful strategies to maximize your online communication and MONETIZE your "selling space." Presenters: Dr. Stephen L. Goldstein and Brian Ross Lee identify and discuss the 7 strategies so you can put them to work for you TODAY!
Title:

Raise More Money with Social Media NOW! You Don't Have to Cultivate Donors Forever
Date:
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Time:
11:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT
After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.
System RequirementsPC-based attendeesRequired: Windows® 7, Vista, XP, 2003 Server or 2000
Macintosh®-based attendeesRequired: Mac OS® X 10.4.11 (Tiger®) or newer

A new report underscores the big impact giving organizations can make by investing their charitable dollars in advocacy, community organizing and civic engagement.

Seventy nonprofits in Los Angeles County, Minnesota, New Mexico and North Carolina that received charitable investment in policy work generated nearly $14 billion worth of benefits for their communities over five years, plus other monetary gains, says the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.

The return on each dollar of those investments ranged from $89 to $157, the report says.

“Foundation support turns indifference into democracy and the benefits of a thriving democracy are indeed substantial,” says Aaron Dorfman, executive director of the group.

In a new report on policy investment in Los Angeles County, the latest in a series of studies the group has made, it found 15 local nonprofits from 2004 to 2008 generated nearly $6.9 billion in benefits for local citizens from $75.5 million invested in their advocacy, organizing and civic-engagement work, or $91 in benefits for every $1 invested.

The benefits included $2.6 billion in higher wages, $2.2 billion in health-care savings, and over $2 billion in increased use of public transit, construction of new schools and expanded affordable housing.

Kafi Blumenfield, CEO and executive director of the Liberty Hill Foundation in Los Angles, says the research shows “foundations best serve their own objectives and generate the greatest impact on communities when we support advocacy and organizing at the grassroots level.”

The report recommends foundations step up grant for advocacy and organizing; help donors understand the benefits of advocacy funding; back collaboration among community groups; pool resources with other grantmakers; and invest over the long term in the capacity of grassroots groups.

By investing in policy and community work, and in building nonprofits’ capacity, foundations and other giving organizations can spur progress in addressing the symptoms and causes of urgent social and global problems.

Todd Cohen, a veteran news reporter and editor, is editor and publisher of Philanthropy Journal, an online newspaper that is a program of the Institute for Nonprofits at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C. Cohen has taught nonprofit reporting and media relations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Duke University, and regularly speaks on the topics of nonprofit media relations and trends in the charitable world.

How can a social enterprise save the lives of young people? In this audio lecture sponsored by the Center for Social Innovation, Steve Cole talks about the Re-Mission video game, a project that inspires young people to take their pills after their cancer has been put into remission. The game was the first product of HopeLab, an organization dedicated to improving the health and quality of life of young people with chronic illness.

Silo mentality, too much focus on day to day details can prevent organizations from realizing their strategic initiatives. Here are tools for overcoming these barriers.

Back in January, I wrote about my deep, nagging fear that many efforts to assess outcomes are woefully off track.

Not everyone agreed with my analysis. In fact, I got hard pushback on some points, and a few commentators wondered why it had taken me so long to own up to my own limitations in my approach over the years to the topic of outcomes.

The majority, however, agreed with the thesis that we’ve lost sight of the ends we’re trying to advance. In the wise words of David Hunter, Managing Partner of Hunter Consulting and former Director of Assessment for the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation: “It seems to me that the mess you describe indeed is enormous and very destructive—because few people involved in this work have thought deeply about managing towards outcomes and [they] have put the horse before the cart—focusing…on HOW to measure rather than on WHY measure…and WHAT to measure.”

Sins of Commission, Sins of Omission
The feedback confirmed for me that nonprofit executives, staff, and boards; donors; and assessment experts are deeply frustrated with our sector’s work around outcomes.

We must be intentional about surfacing these roiling frustrations that are rarely getting voiced. If we don’t, we’re going to continue to perpetrate sins of commission and omission that prevent us from making even the slightest dent in the failing status quo that defines education, healthcare, and social services in America.

The most common sin of commission is when we funders, in the name of “measurement” and “accountability,” foist unfunded, often overly simplistic, self-serving mandates on our grantees—rather than genuinely helping them define, create, and use the information they need to be disciplined managers.

The sin of omission I often see is when funders and nonprofits run away from outcomes and their measurement altogether—that is, nothing assesses whether nonprofits are delivering on their promises to the families who turn to them for services.

It’s About Management, Not Metrics
It is clear to me that our sector needs a major reset on the approach to outcomes—from how we think about them to how we assess them. More than anything else, our sector needs a singular focus on managing to outcomes. Here’s precisely what I mean:

• Nonprofits need to gain clarity, through thoughtful introspection, on what change they are trying to create;
• They need to gain specificity on how they will accomplish that change;
• They need to identify what information (hard and soft) will be most helpful for determining if they are on course to achieve that change; 
• They need to collect and use this information as a basis for being disciplined within mission—that is, to plan, make important decisions, track, course correct, and improve;
• They need to combine all of the above with good judgment and keen discernment, which are more important than any metric.

What Managing to Outcomes Looks Like
Geoff Canada, founder and CEO of Harlem Children’s Zone and one of my heroes, raised a stir with some provocative comments that were published in the New York publication City Limits. 

When Canada was asked to define success for HCZ, he said, “The only benchmark of success is college graduation. That’s the only one: How many kids you got in college, how many kids you got out.”

Canada could not have been clearer on the ultimate outcomes HCZ is focused on achieving. It’s not improving reading levels. It’s not getting kids to graduate high school. It’s not helping kids get into college. To HCZ, these are important interim indicators to ensure they are moving in the right direction, but, ultimately, it’s ensuring those young people make it through college that matters.

With that great clarity as a starting point, Canada and his team, with the help of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, Bridgespan, and others, have gotten good at identifying the information they need to collect in order to manage to these outcomes. Are all the kids in the HCZ graduating from college? Of course not. But HCZ is on a very promising path. 

A Challenge to Us All
If you’re not focused on outcomes (or doing very little), then please recognize that you—the executives, staff, board, and funders—have an affirmative obligation to engage. It’s mission-critical to know whether you’re on track to deliver what you promise to those you serve. I have great respect for leaders’ intuition, but intuition alone is almost never enough.

If your nonprofit has defined your intended outcomes and maybe even progressed to reporting on them, then please stop, step back, and rigorously question what you’ve done (or plan to do). Remember the critical, first-order question, “To what end?” Think about Geoff Canada. Are you on a path to gain the clarity he has achieved (after many years of struggle!) on the ends he’s trying to advance for the children and young people he serves?

I encourage nonprofits to undertake facilitated discussions, perhaps inviting informed voices to brief their boards and staff. For example, I’ve been fortunate to be deeply engaged with The Lawrence School in Northeast Ohio, which serves grades 1-12 students with learning differences and attention-deficit disorders. We have benefited greatly by having a facilitator—a seasoned, skilled professional who understands management and organizations well—lead working groups of board and staff to sort out and define fundamental aspects of what the school does and represents. The facilitator has helped us conduct concerted and lengthy efforts to gain greater clarity of mission and vision and define the school’s guiding principles and underlying values.  Similarly, discussions are well along to clarify and explain more clearly whom the school serves and to define, with specificity, its educational model and how it differentiates itself from other educational approaches. The gains have been nothing short of transformational.

None of this suggests in any way that summative and formative evaluation are not important, particularly for building information about what works and what doesn’t for the field or a discipline. But if we really want to help organizations deliver quality services most effectively, then our priority must be on identifying the nonprofits with the willingness, propensity, and capacity to manage to outcomes—and then helping them do just that, with strong encouragement, significant funding, and relevant expertise.

Mario Morino, a former software entrepreneur, is the chairman of Venture Philanthropy Partners, based in Washington, DC.

 

And now for the next generation of the powers of social media to cause-politicize the masses, get ready for You Video.

No, we’re not talking YouTube. That’s oh-so-yesterday. Think 2010 midterm elections. As the political waters heat up online and off, progressives are carving out a new 3.0 approach to political outreach, launching a new type of fundraising video that, well, involves the up close and personal “you.” On video. No kidding. [Quick, better spruce up that online photo.]

To see just how up close and personalized these videos are, check out the latest “Blue State” fundraising appeal from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), in partnership with MoveOn.org and Brave New Films. Called “Glenn Beck Attacks,” the campaign personalizes a video interface and, using a Facebook interface that “grabs” your photo and other personal data from your Wall, instantly creates a pseudo newscast with you all over it.

The video caption reads: “Fox host Glenn Beck spent much of the last week claiming that a normal, everyday progressive was linked to Stalin, Elvis, Joe Biden’s cousin, and the guy who came up with the idea of taxes.”

The interface adds your name and picture to a phony CNN-like news segment,  but for those who wish [depending on the level of your political angst or activism], the video can be personalized even further, to include one’s hometown, friends’ names, employer, and so forth.

Have a look by clicking on http://beck.cnnbcvideo.com and walk through the paces.

Is this the next generation of political advertising, or the next privacy violation? The site advises people to worry not: “This video and site are fictional and satirical,” it says.

What do you think? Is this campaign going to go viral or is it too close for comfort? And regardless, what applications might there be here for cause-related video campaigns? Let us hear from you.

Marcia Stepanek is Founding Editor-in-Chief and President, News and Information, for Contribute Media, a New York-based magazine, Web site, and conference series about the new people and ideas of giving. She is the publisher of Cause Global, an acclaimed new blog about the use of digital media for social change. She also serves as moderator and producer of New Conversations for Change, Contribute’s forum series highlighting social entrepreneurs and new trends in philanthropy.

 

So here we are, several weeks after text donations crossed from cutting edge to common place. I’ve been interviewed more times than I can count on what matters about text giving, and the real experts on social media and social good (Beth Kanter, Katrin Verclas, Allison Fine, Holly Ross, Geoff Livingston) have written, been quoted, held panel discussions, and written handbooks on the subject.

After all this good discussion, I’ve come to think that the question should not be “to text or not” but “what matters about mobile?” From the point of view of nonprofits, mobile gives them the opportunity to add a new location. Essentially, every organization in the world just got the opportunity to expand their footprint to include their current location and every mobile phone.

It may be like winning the location lottery. An organization can be where they are now and also on every one’s mobile phones.* That might be through a text short code. It might be through an App. It might be by being on FourSquare or other geolocation services. Maybe NPOs should start tagging their service delivery areas on Google Maps? The possibilities are many - far more than “just” a question of getting text donation enabled. Of course, like winning the lottery, organization now have to make choices they never had to worry about before.

Mobile matters. It matters as a news source and distribution channel. It matters as a payment system. It matters as a marketing platform. It matters as an organizing tool. Yes, I know the “to text donate or not question” is complicated in and of itself. Sadly, it is also too simple a question.

*(Noting that more and more nonprofits are being born on mobile phones - e.g., Ushahidi, The Extraordinaries)

Lucy Bernholz is the founder and president of Blueprint Research & Design, Inc, a strategy consulting firm that helps philanthropic individuals and institutions achieve their missions. She is the publisher of Philanthropy2173, an award winning blog about the business of giving and serves as executive producer of The Giving Channel on Fora.tv.

 

Audrey Seagraves has a passion for international development and social enterprise. In this audio interview with Stanford Center for Social Innovation correspondent Sheela Sethuraman, the director of programs at World of Good talks about the creation of Fair Wage Guide software, a free tool that tells the viewer how wages being paid to any artisan worldwide compare to international wage standards.

Although California is often admired for its healthy living, three of it’s cities made it to the 10 Most Obese Metro Areas list. Stockton, CA—which was also recently crowned Most Miserable US City by Forbes—has the highest obesity rate, with 34.6 percent of residents being overweight. This compares to a national average of 26.5 percent obesity, up from 25.5 percent in 2008.

Results from the Gallup poll show that regions ranking high on obesity generally rank low on healthy behavior indicators. Specifically, all of the 10 most obese metro areas (shown above) fall within the bottom two-thirds of all areas surveyed for frequent exercise. Furthermore, when they asked if people had a safe place to exercise, six of the areas came in below the national average.

In terms of eating habits, “of the 10 most obese places, seven are in the bottom two-thirds among all metro areas for reporting eating healthy “yesterday” and for fruit and vegetable consumption.” We know that eating habits develop based on food access and affordability, as well as nutrition education.

“Everyone has a role to play in this fight: the private sector, the public sector and parents must unite to combat the challenge,” said Lisa Gable, Executive Director of the The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation . In fact, the group just launched a $20 million anti-obesity campaign to encourage some of the world’s largest food makers (including Pepsi, General Mills, and Nestle) to reconsider the way they sell their products. This includes encouraging food companies to make packaging and labeling easier for consumers to manage their calorie intake while preserving or enhancing overall nutrition quality.

Interestingly enough, The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation is a partnership between these very organizations they seek to influence. More than 60 of the nation’s largest retailers, non-profit organizations, food and beverage manufacturers and trade associations are behind this effort to reduce obesity, especially childhood obesity, by 2015.

Because obesity is linked to chronic health problems like high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart attack, it becomes an economic problem, too. Lack of access to health insurance only exacerbates the problem, leaving people sick and public services stretched. (A few months ago, the New York Times shared two graphs showing national obesity rates and Medicare expenditures).

Gable describes their program to target the fitness and nutrition aspects of the problem: “We are supporting physical and nutrition education in schools, promoting workplace wellness within our organizations, and making more healthy foods and beverages available to consumers in the marketplace.”

She continues, “Obesity is a serious health and economic issue for our country, one we all must work together to solve.”

Halle Tecco is a San Francisco resident and social entrepreneur passionate about technology, service and healthy living. She is the Founder and Executive Director of Yoga Bear, a non-profit providing more opportunities of health and wellness to cancer patients through the practice of yoga. Halle has worked as a Product Manager at various consumer-internet startups, including Enternships.com and Kiva.org. She also serves as an advisor to GreatNonprofits.org. She is pursuing her MBA at Harvard Business School and will graduate in 2011.

Many psychologists, writers and other students of human nature have reached the same conclusion: people are usually too distracted, tired, scared, or just plain lazy to act on their best intentions. But few of these observers suggest how us humans might overcome our less noble tendencies.

Scientists at a recent Stanford Center for Social Innovation conference, however, presented a bevy of tactics for transforming even the most bumbling schlemiel into a model citizen. Called “Small Steps, Big Leaps: The Science of Getting People to do the Right Thing,” the event showcased how to use gentle nudges, subtle tweaks, and quiet prompts to summon better behavior. 

One of the most overlooked strategies for getting people to be generous, for instance, is actually to ask them, related Frank Flynn of Stanford Graduate School of Business. Flynn discussed his experiments showing that one barrier to “the ask” is that people grossly underestimate how often their requests for help will be honored. And if at first you do not succeed, then ask, ask again, he recommended, presenting findings that people who say “no” to an initial ask are more likely to say “yes” to a subsequent one.

You need not even tell people how much to give, noted Leif Nelson of the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. His findings show that people sometimes donate more when they get to set the amount.

And you need not feel guilty about asking people to help, because you may actually be doing them a favor, suggested Mike Norton of Harvard Business School. His studies reveal that giving people the chance to help others can improve everything from their mood to their dodge-ball game.

Even better than asking people to take the high road is making the high road the easiest one to take, argued Eric Johnson of the Columbia School of Business. When policies and practices turn good behavior into the default option, people tend to act more ethically—or, as Johnson put it, “There’s something very special about doing nothing.” For example, in countries where people have to take the trouble to opt out of organ donation—a post-death benevolence that many societies value—vastly more people donate their organs than do in countries like the United States, where people have to go out of their way to opt in to organ donation. Likewise, people save more money when their employers automatically enroll them in retirement savings programs and use less energy when florescent bulbs are the only light in town. (For more about defaults, see “Helping the Poor Save More” in the winter 2010 Stanford Social Innovation Review.)

If you must trouble yourself with framing a message, several researchers revealed how simple shifts in wording can spell the difference between vice and virtue. Just mentioning money can throw people off their altruism game, showed Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. Her experiments demonstrate that even minor references to cash make people stingier and less sensitive to suffering—even their own. For fundraisers whose job is to ask people for money, Vohs’ findings could inspire dismay. But she has an antidote: First ask people to donate their time, and then ask them to donate their money.

Noah Goldstein of UCLA’s Anderson School of Management similarly showed the power of getting words right. Public service announcements and other social good campaigns often communicate that everybody pollutes, steals, carouses, or otherwise behaves badly—but you shouldn’t. (“Only YOU can prevent forest fires!” exhorts Smokey Bear.) Yet humans are herd animals; and so despite our claims to uniqueness and independence, we tend to follow the crowd. As a result, campaigns that imply that the crowd is up to no good often backfire: A sign in Arizona’s Petrified Forest reporting that visitors purloin some 14 tons of wood per year, for example, doesn’t deter such theft—it encourages theft.

A better way, said Goldstein, is to convey that most people are doing the right thing—and you should, too. Accordingly, a sign saying that most guests conserved water by reusing their towels (rather than having them laundered) inspires far more towel reuse than does a sign lamenting how many guests waste water. 

Pictures and stories that put a human face on an issue can also steer people towards right action, related Adam Grant of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Radiologists read X-rays more accurately when they see a picture of the bones’ owners, Grant showed, and lifeguards work harder after hearing stories about heroic water rescues.

Putting people in the driver’s seat of their own narratives also works wonders, reported Steve Cole of HopeLab, a Redwood City, Calif.-based company that makes health-promoting products for children with chronic diseases. In HopeLab’s first-person shooter video game, Re-Mission, for example, kids recovering from cancer travel through the human body and, with the help of medicines, blast would-be cancer cells out of their paths. The game is clinically proven to help kids take their post-chemotherapy maintenance drugs—a crucial, yet difficult step in their recovery.

Nonprofits too must control their own narratives, warned Jennifer Aaker of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She presented data showing that nonprofits suffer from the stereotype of being warm and caring, but not very competent. To boost donations and public confidence, nonprofits need to advertise their business acumen.

But perhaps they should do so softly, for the resounding message throughout the conference was this: You need not scream and push when a
whisper and a nudge will do. That’s advice that even the most distracted, tired, scared and even lazy social innovator can get behind.

Alana Conner, PhD is the senior editor of the Stanford Social Innovation Review. A social science writer, editor, and consultant whose specialty is cultural psychology, Alana received her doctorate in social psychology from Stanford University and her postdoctoral certificate in psychology and medicine from the University of California, San Francisco. In addition to her blog, Alana has written for a number of venues including The New York Times Magazine and Static.

Earlier this year, I profiled four “now generation” leaders to watch because they are, and will be, doing amazing things for social change in the next year.  But the main reason I wanted to coin the term ‘now generation’ is because I think the ‘next generation’ moniker gives young people (and everyone else) the sense that we have to wait for some undetermined time before we can lead. We have to wait until someone hands us the baton. We have to sit on the sidelines until someone passes us the ball. And until then, we’ve got to sit quietly with the other kids and try to catch the crumbs of wisdom and power that fall from the big kid’s table. We’ve got to wait until we get “next.”

If that’s what we mean by ‘next generation’ leaders, I sure don’t want to be one. To be clear, I don’t see anything wrong with the term in and of itself, but rather how it may be being used to reinforce the current distribution of power in the nonprofit sector.

The Normative Problem

In some ways, I see the term ‘next generation’ being used to further the normative problem we have in nonprofits. Harvard professor and scholar Ron Heifetz talks about how “normative issues” in leadership can make it difficult for new leaders to emerge. Basically, the term ‘normative’ means relating to an ideal model or standard for something, i.e. the “norm.” Heifetz says that we have a normative problem when a community believes collectively that leaders have certain characteristics like age, experience, pedigree, etc. And when a community believes that leaders come packaged in a particular way, they are more likely to wait for those types of leaders to come, instead of allowing different kinds of leaders to emerge. By saying ‘next generation’ leaders, I think we may be implying that young people are up “next” when we reach a certain age or level of experience, which is, in effect “the norm” for current leadership.

‘Next Generation’ Leaders are Not That Young

Most characterizations of the ‘next generation’ assume that these leaders are much younger than current leaders. Hence, the waiting “until we get old enough” connotation. But the reality is that young nonprofit leaders who are typically referenced as the ‘next generation’ are not as young as people think. We’re not all college kids anymore. This year, the oldest of Generation Y will be 30 years old. We’re no longer the “baby” in the workplace, we’re managers and directors and CEOs of great organizations. In short, the young professionals I’ve been talking about on this blog for three years have quickly become the ‘now generation.’ But I’m not sure the term ‘next generation’ takes that into account.

Who Decides When ‘Next Generation’ Leaders Become ‘Now Generation’ Leaders?

Having a cadre of bright young leaders in the nonprofit sector is great, but typecasting us as the ‘next generation’can also indicate that we need someone from up on high to deem us “ready” to lead when our time comes. Using the term can make it seem as if young people will lead after all the Baby Boomers are gone, however we all know that’s not gonna happen anytime soon. Baby Boomers are staying in their jobs longer as a result of the economic downturn, and many are taking on “encore careers” as nonprofit leaders. So it’s up to us, the young nonprofit leaders, to redefine who gets to say when we’re ready to lead. It can’t be our bosses, our mentors, or some older and wiser colleague. It is we who must decide for ourselves whether and when we will lead. I’ve heard too many stories of young people who come into the nonprofit sector, do their jobs well, and wait to be promoted or included or at the very least, heard. What I’ve realized in hearing these stories is that if young people wait for approval from their organizations to lead, if we wait for someone to deem us worthy of leadership opportunities, it will never happen. We have to make our own opportunities. Malcolm X once said (my brackets), “Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man [or woman], you take it.” I want to see us take it.

So the new question I think we need to ask ourselves is not what we will do as ‘next generation’ nonprofit leaders, but what we are already doing to lead right now today. How do you answer that question for yourself? Do you consider yourself to be a ‘next generation’ leader?

Rosetta Thurman is a writer, speaker, professor and consultant working and living in the Washington, D.C. area.  She holds a Master’s degree in Nonprofit Management and blogs about nonprofits, leadership and social change at rosettathurman.com

Social entrepreneurship requires conscious leadership, says Whole Foods CEO John Mackey in this University podcast. Delivering a talk sponsored by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, Mackey issues a clarion call for nothing less than "conscious capitalism," arguing that business can indeed serve more than the almighty dollar. He discusses his own company's challenges in the social enterprise arena.

“The Fundraising Guru”
Fundraising only gels if you sell well
By Dr. Stephen L. Goldstein

I know that people who work on behalf of nonprofits like to think of themselves as doing something for the common good. I know that because, whenever I hold workshops, the first question I ask participants is, “What is a nonprofit?” And invariably, their answers accentuate an altruistic angle. “It’s an organization that serves society,” they say, or one “that helps the needy,” or it’s “a group of individuals who hold events to raise money for worthy purposes.”



The last thing in the world that supporters of nonprofits like to think they are is salespeople; they consider themselves a cut above schnooks selling shoes or used cars. I know that because when I ask my second question—“What is fundraising?”—no one ever answers “sales.” Instead predictably, the answers have a mushy quality equal to the definition of a nonprofit. Fundraising is the “ability to raise capital for an entity,” “stewardship, relationship-building in order to raise funds for an agency,” “an effort to generate funds for a good cause.”


So, it’s time for a major reality check for everyone who works on behalf of nonprofits. From doctors and plumbers to entrepreneurs and artists, successful people know how to sell--well. Fundraising is “nonprofit sales,” pure and simple. If you don’t know how to sell, you’ll never be an effective fundraiser. And if your first reaction to the idea of “nonprofit fundraising as selling” is to hold your nose, you’re probably holding back whatever cause(s) you support. So, here are some basic tips to help you increase your effectiveness in fundraising sales:


1. Selling is the quintessential skill. It’s not about getting others to do something they don’t want to or to buy something they don’t need. At its best, selling is the highest form of communication: It’s about making the perfect match between what you have to offer and what someone else wants. It’s an art.


2. Rejection isn’t rejection. So what if someone says no to you. It’s not the end of your life nor should you punish them on your voodoo doll. Think of how many times you may have said no to someone without meaning any ill towards them—and move on to someone else.


3. Fundraising is not about “the ask,” but about “the listen.” Remember the lyric, “fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” Consider your customers before you chew their ears off about your cause. Too many do-gooder fundraisers have a “prima facie, ipso facto attitude.” They think that all they have to do is blurt out the basics of their case and their prey will open their wallet. Ain’t so! Do your homework: Find out about people you approach. Take an interest in them. You’ll be amazed at how interested they’ll become in you.


4. Commit to selling 24/7. The best/most successful fundraisers even dream about raising money. Fundraising is a frame of mind, an all-consuming passion, not a 9-to-5 job. From a check-out line in Publix to a tuxedo-filled ballroom, fundraiser-salespeople know that there are six degrees of separation—or less--between them and the next contribution they receive.


5. Multiply your donors’ gifts. Donors who are treated well beget other donors. The most successful fundraiser-salespeople know that fundraising only gels if you sell well.
Dr. Stephen Goldstein if the author of 30 Days to Successful Fundraising and the host of the broadcast radio program, “The Forum for Nonprofits,” which is also available 24/7 from anywhere in the world.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com
Amazing Grace:
Lake Forest secret millionaire donates fortune to college
Woman who lived frugally donates $7 million to alma mater
By John Keilman, Tribune reporter
11:25 AM EST, March 4, 2010
Like many people who lived through the Great Depression, Grace Groner was exceptionally restrained with her money.

She got her clothes from rummage sales. She walked everywhere rather than buy a car. And her one-bedroom house in Lake Forest held little more than a few plain pieces of furniture, some mismatched dishes and a hulking TV set that appeared left over from the Johnson administration.

Her one splurge was a small scholarship program she had created for Lake Forest College, her alma mater. She planned to contribute more upon her death, and when she passed away in January, at the age of 100, her attorney informed the college president what that gift added up to.

"Oh, my God," the president said.

Groner's estate, which stemmed from a $180 stock purchase she made in 1935, was worth $7 million.

The money is going into a foundation that will enable many of Lake Forest's 1,300 students to pursue internships and study-abroad programs they otherwise might have had to forgo. It will be an appropriate memorial to a woman whose life was a testament to the higher possibilities of wealth.

"She did not have the (material) needs that other people have," said William Marlatt, her attorney and longtime friend. "She could have lived in any house in Lake Forest but she chose not to. … She enjoyed other people, and every friend she had was a friend for who she was. They weren't friends for what she had."

Groner was born in a small Lake County farming community, but by the time she was 12 both of her parents had died. She was taken in by George Anderson, a member of one of Lake Forest's leading families and an apparent friend to Groner's parents.

The Andersons raised her and her twin sister, Gladys, and paid for them to attend Lake Forest College. After Groner graduated in 1931, she took a job at nearby Abbott Laboratories, where she would work as a secretary for 43 years.

It was early in her time there that she made a decision that would secure her financial future.
In 1935, she bought three $60 shares of specially issued Abbott stock and never sold them. The shares split many times over the next seven decades, Marlatt said, and Groner reinvested the dividends. Long before she died, her initial outlay had become a fortune.

Marlatt was one of the few who knew about it. Lake Forest is one of America's richest towns, filled with grand estates and teeming with luxury cars, yet Groner felt no urge to keep up with the neighbors.

She lived in an apartment for many years before a friend willed her a tiny house in a part of town once reserved for the servants. Its single bedroom could barely accommodate a twin bed and dresser; its living room was undoubtedly smaller than many Lake Forest closets.

Though Groner was frugal, she was no miser. She traveled widely upon her retirement from Abbott, volunteered for decades at the First Presbyterian Church and occasionally funneled anonymous gifts through Marlatt to needy local residents.

"She was very sensitive to people not having a whole lot," said Pastor Kent Kinney of First Presbyterian. "Grace would see those people, would know them, and she would make gifts."
Groner never wed or had children — the sister of one prospective groom blocked the marriage, Marlatt said — but with her gregarious personality she had plenty of friends. She remained connected to Lake Forest College, too, attending football games and cultural events on campus and donating $180,000 for a scholarship program.

That allowed a few students a year to study internationally, including Erin McGinley, 34, a junior from Lake Zurich. She traveled to Falmouth, Jamaica, to help document and preserve historic buildings in the former slave port. The experience was so satisfying that she is trying to get Lake Forest to create a similar architectural preservation program.

"It affected my (career ambitions) in a way I didn't expect," she said.

But Groner was interested in doing more, so two years ago she set up a foundation to receive her estate. Stephen Schutt, Lake Forest's president, knew of the plan for the past year, but had no idea how large the gift would be until after Groner passed away Jan. 19.

The foundation's millions should generate more than $300,000 a year for the college, enabling dozens more students to travel and pursue internships. Many probably wouldn't be able to pursue those opportunities without a scholarship: 75 percent of the student body receives financial aid, Schutt said.

But the study and internship program is not the end of Groner's legacy. She left that small house to the college, too. It will be turned into living quarters for women who receive foundation scholarships, and perhaps something more: an enduring symbol that money can buy far more than mansions.

It will be called, with fitting simplicity, "Grace's Cottage."
jkeilman@tribune.com
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune

A new report from the team at Forrester came out last week: Tapping The Entire Online Peer Influence Pyramid.  It comes at the same time that I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the importance of community builders/managers/leaders or organizational voices to give permission back to the community members.  The evaluation and recognition of peer influence, something that is not only prevalent but inherent in social media, is something that help empower and sustain your communities AND increase your staff capacity.  Let’s discuss!

First, let’s talk about permission.

As organizations or community builders active online, working to practice and create quality engagement, we are often trying to guide, collect or herd conversations and interactions into spaces that we have created or monitor closely. When I say “give permission,” in this post, I’m really saying that you should balance the herding and collecting of the community with the encouragement and empowerment for the community to go wherever it wants with your message or information.

Giving permission to the community is really just recognizing that conversations already take place in spaces online where you don’t have a presence, a fan page, or a profile. That people talk about your services or programs, issues or sector wherever they are and you may never know about it, know them, or be part of the conversation.

Giving permission to the community to have conversations without you requires trust. You have to trust that the community will take your communications or mission forward. You have to trust that the community will monitor or respond to comments or issues in a way that matches the way you would (that you’ve modeled the behavior the way you want it repeated).

The conversations and connections that are taking place elsewhere, whether it’s on or offline, don’t have to remain a mystery to you, though.  Give permission for your community to report back - and provide the mechanisms to do so.  Create places for or explicitly ask for feedback, not just about what you do and how you do it (which you probably already do) but also what your community is doing, learning, hearing, seeing, interested in and so on. This way you can build active two-way communications that help you stay informed but also empower the community members to be part of team.

Now, what about peer influence?

I’ve talked before about how to map your community and the messages within it.  What’s so great about the chart from Forrester at the top of this post is that it shows you a great way to view segments of your database in an influential way. You don’t simply have to say there are people that respond to action alerts and those that don’t… I may not sign your petition, but what if I’m forwarding it on? What if you could send powerful invitations to spread the word or rally behind a cause or action to a select group of people instead of creating mass mailings to everyone you know?  Think of the difference: your communications become more strategic, more streamlined, and more efficient by recognizing those in your list that fall into the different peer influence categories!

Giving permission to peer influence

All of this is really to say: you can create a multiple win for your organization and your community by giving permission to broadcast and influence on your behalf.  It sounds simple, but there are always infastructre requirements behind everything.  In order to give permission and leverage the peer influencers in your community, you need:

• to create a dashboard, toolbox, or any other catchy name where influencers can grab images, videos, files or messages that are ready to be broadcast
• to create opportunities for influencers to be unique or valuable with their participation
• to monitor how your influence tools are used (“share with a friend” or RT or so on) to see what content is best or most successfully shared and if there are new influencers emerging
• to provide recognition or spotlight for those that are taking your message into their networks and creating impact
• to help your staff, team or organization to understand the value in distributing the communications and influence of your work, and help them leverage the network in similar ways across all departments and campaigns

What do you think?

How has your organization seen peer influence or community leaders emerge in social media? How have you created ways to give value back to those driving your message to their own communities? (Think about all of this in terms of campaigns, fundraising, events and more!)

Amy Sample Ward’s passion for nonprofit technology has lead her to involvement with NTEN, NetSquared, and a host of other organizations. She shares many of her thoughts on nonprofit technology news and evolutions on her blog.