Sunday, October 25, 2009
AFP: CRS Fundraising And Technology102609
Slide deck for the presentation I am giving for the Association of Fundraising Professionals(MD) Philanthropy Day Morning Educational Session...
H1N1 is no joke!
Okay, enough with the excuses, but MAN my family has been through it! All four of us got it and for all the blase attitude I had about it in the beginning, this thing really kicked my ass. I still sound horrid, coughing and wheezing, but I no longer feel like I've been hit by a truck. My poor baby girl Georgie had a 105.7 (!!!) fever...THAT was scary.
We are all on the mend, slowly but surely. I've missed a whole week of work and I feel really disconnected from the world. But tomorrow morning I have a presentation at the AFP-MD Philanthropy Day in Baltimore and I am keeping fingers crossed that I can get through it without a coughing fit. Yikes.
Once I get back in the saddle, more senseless ramblings about social media. But for now, just a thought...what the HELL is facebook thinking with their little guilt-trippy suggestions of people I should "Reconnect with"? (over in the section that used to be reserved for "People you might know"). It feels really icky, even though I know it is just some algorithm telling the Facebot to show me people I have friended but never actually interacted with. Oh, come on...you know what I mean. You get a friend request from someone you can't diss, but you really aren't crazy about so you accept the request - and if you are me, you place them on a restricted list so they can only see certain types of information about you. I shouldn't get a little pang of guilt from facebook of all places. It's like in elementary school and your mother insists on inviting the whole class to your birthday party so no one feels left out.
We are all on the mend, slowly but surely. I've missed a whole week of work and I feel really disconnected from the world. But tomorrow morning I have a presentation at the AFP-MD Philanthropy Day in Baltimore and I am keeping fingers crossed that I can get through it without a coughing fit. Yikes.
Once I get back in the saddle, more senseless ramblings about social media. But for now, just a thought...what the HELL is facebook thinking with their little guilt-trippy suggestions of people I should "Reconnect with"? (over in the section that used to be reserved for "People you might know"). It feels really icky, even though I know it is just some algorithm telling the Facebot to show me people I have friended but never actually interacted with. Oh, come on...you know what I mean. You get a friend request from someone you can't diss, but you really aren't crazy about so you accept the request - and if you are me, you place them on a restricted list so they can only see certain types of information about you. I shouldn't get a little pang of guilt from facebook of all places. It's like in elementary school and your mother insists on inviting the whole class to your birthday party so no one feels left out.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
I'm no Chris Brogan
If you are not already an avid reader of Chris Brogan's blog, or don't know who he is, I highly recommend a daily dose of Chris (you can sign up for e-mail alerts that send his most recent post to your inbox). I nearly always walk away with a new idea or confirmation of something I have an opinion of. Sometime he helps me to articulate an argument I've had trouble finding the right words for when talking about social media. For instance I love this wonderful "apple tree" analogy:
Great stuff, no?
But the reason I'm no Chris Brogan or Seth Godin or Beth Kanter is that my poor blog is not the central mouthpiece of my work. Sadly, my blog is like the plants in my house...if only they would whine or at least meow, they would have a much better chance of surviving.
This past two weeks has been a blur of natural disasters and sick kids and even giving them the attention that was due was an exhausting feat.
But it hammers home the point...you can't have it all (and to quote Steven Wright, "where would you put it?") Time is an ethereal luxury. You can neither stop it, nor control it.
Embrace it. Enjoy it. Focus on the most important thing in your life at that moment. For me, sometimes it's the knowledge that millions of people were suddenly left homeless due to the unrelenting series of disasters in the Asia-Pacific region and sometimes it's the feverish cry of a small child who needs you to drop everything and just sit with him.
And that's okay. In the grand scheme of things, the blog can wait.
Stay tuned...
Focus on the Relationship – to me, the new unit of business should be relationships. You get more fruit from an apple tree if you nurture it and pick apples when it’s ripe, instead of uprooting the tree and forcefully shaking the apples into your barrel.I plan on ripping this off the next time I get called in to explain why it is taking so long to grow our list and why I don't just want to rent an e-mail list.
Great stuff, no?
But the reason I'm no Chris Brogan or Seth Godin or Beth Kanter is that my poor blog is not the central mouthpiece of my work. Sadly, my blog is like the plants in my house...if only they would whine or at least meow, they would have a much better chance of surviving.
This past two weeks has been a blur of natural disasters and sick kids and even giving them the attention that was due was an exhausting feat.
But it hammers home the point...you can't have it all (and to quote Steven Wright, "where would you put it?") Time is an ethereal luxury. You can neither stop it, nor control it.
Embrace it. Enjoy it. Focus on the most important thing in your life at that moment. For me, sometimes it's the knowledge that millions of people were suddenly left homeless due to the unrelenting series of disasters in the Asia-Pacific region and sometimes it's the feverish cry of a small child who needs you to drop everything and just sit with him.
And that's okay. In the grand scheme of things, the blog can wait.
Stay tuned...
Friday, October 2, 2009
Oh earthlings on Twitter, why must you disappoint me so?
Dear Twitter,
Working for an international humanitarian NGO, I tend to be a bit more globally focused than most. But considering the number of colossal natural disasters to strike the Philippines, Samoa and Tonga and Sumatra, Indonesia this week, it just breaks my heart when I read your top trending topics, and they are all about completely mundane, pop-culture stuff.
Your coverage of the #iranelection was when I started to find you so attractive, and I had high hopes that you would rise above as the more adult network for sharing ideas and news on a global scale. But - to say this bluntly - you are rapidly proving yourself to me as just another site on a breakneck race to the middle. To say I am disappointed in you is an understatement.
Twitter, I want to love you so. In theory we should be perfect for each other. But lately I feel as if I am the one doing all the work to try and make this relationship evolve. I am not saying I am breaking up with you, but maybe a trial separation is in order.
Maybe you could take the time to reflect on your public timeline and decide, is this what you really want? To be the mouthpiece of the Ashton Kutchers and Perez Hiltons and relate tidbits of celeb gossip in real time?
Think about it and please let me know.
@ellebe
Working for an international humanitarian NGO, I tend to be a bit more globally focused than most. But considering the number of colossal natural disasters to strike the Philippines, Samoa and Tonga and Sumatra, Indonesia this week, it just breaks my heart when I read your top trending topics, and they are all about completely mundane, pop-culture stuff.
Your coverage of the #iranelection was when I started to find you so attractive, and I had high hopes that you would rise above as the more adult network for sharing ideas and news on a global scale. But - to say this bluntly - you are rapidly proving yourself to me as just another site on a breakneck race to the middle. To say I am disappointed in you is an understatement.
Twitter, I want to love you so. In theory we should be perfect for each other. But lately I feel as if I am the one doing all the work to try and make this relationship evolve. I am not saying I am breaking up with you, but maybe a trial separation is in order.
Maybe you could take the time to reflect on your public timeline and decide, is this what you really want? To be the mouthpiece of the Ashton Kutchers and Perez Hiltons and relate tidbits of celeb gossip in real time?
Think about it and please let me know.
@ellebe
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Virtual Insanity
So I just had the honor of speaking at the 2009 National Catholic Development Conference and after a frantic morning of racing around trying to make sure the conference room where I would be speaking had wireless internet access (it did, thanks to the herculean efforts of one Ryan Gates Gold...who organized that conference so well, it ran like a well-oiled machine - and I know how stressful and challenging it can be to put conference events together. She deserves a standing ovation.)
Anyhoo...my session was called "An Introduction to Social Networking" and much of my prepared presentation was to show Facebook Fan Pages in detail...and wouldn'tcha know it...Facebook Fan pages (at least ours and all the ones I could think of) were down!!! By the time I took the train back to Baltimore, they were fine, but in the 60 minutes I was standing in front of a room full of people, I could not get access to our page. A frantic call to my colleague back at the office, quickly confirmed it was not just me - she couldn't access it either. Drag!
Most people would have to think fast on their feet. Me, I just sorta had an out of body experience...still not sure exactly what I said. I am usually pretty calm about public speaking, but man, I was so flustered!
Trying to talk about social networking in the abstract to a room full of people who have very limited knowledge of Facebook was, let's say, quite a challenge. Of course, being that it was NCDC members, they were all just as nice and polite as they could be, but I felt like I was explaining how to do brain surgery on the moon while speaking in another language. I wish I could have done a better job.
Anyway, lesson learned for next time...screenshot backups. Definitely.
Anyhoo...my session was called "An Introduction to Social Networking" and much of my prepared presentation was to show Facebook Fan Pages in detail...and wouldn'tcha know it...Facebook Fan pages (at least ours and all the ones I could think of) were down!!! By the time I took the train back to Baltimore, they were fine, but in the 60 minutes I was standing in front of a room full of people, I could not get access to our page. A frantic call to my colleague back at the office, quickly confirmed it was not just me - she couldn't access it either. Drag!
Most people would have to think fast on their feet. Me, I just sorta had an out of body experience...still not sure exactly what I said. I am usually pretty calm about public speaking, but man, I was so flustered!
Trying to talk about social networking in the abstract to a room full of people who have very limited knowledge of Facebook was, let's say, quite a challenge. Of course, being that it was NCDC members, they were all just as nice and polite as they could be, but I felt like I was explaining how to do brain surgery on the moon while speaking in another language. I wish I could have done a better job.
Anyway, lesson learned for next time...screenshot backups. Definitely.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Um, Seth? Gotta disagree, bro.
That's it. I've had it.
I'm might as well pack it all in. I'm washed up, useless, worthless, and not fit to have the word "online" in my job title.
According to this post by Seth Godin (who, btw, I've been a fan of since his "Permission Marketing" book in the go-go early dot.com days), the nonprofit I work for is a failure, because it is not in the top 100 Twitter users in terms of followers. And it is my job to develop our social networking outreach strategy. #fail!
Really, Seth? This is how you measure the effectiveness of nonprofits? Really?
I can't think of a more insipid criteria to measure whether a nonprofit is adverse to change or not, or has an effective communications strategy. Here's why:
Seth, I'm sorry; I have to call you out on this one. You've got it all wrong.
I'm might as well pack it all in. I'm washed up, useless, worthless, and not fit to have the word "online" in my job title.
According to this post by Seth Godin (who, btw, I've been a fan of since his "Permission Marketing" book in the go-go early dot.com days), the nonprofit I work for is a failure, because it is not in the top 100 Twitter users in terms of followers. And it is my job to develop our social networking outreach strategy. #fail!
Really, Seth? This is how you measure the effectiveness of nonprofits? Really?
I can't think of a more insipid criteria to measure whether a nonprofit is adverse to change or not, or has an effective communications strategy. Here's why:
- Nonprofits are adverse to change? Maybe, and to varying degrees some more than others, but isn't everyone? When's the last time you brought home a different brand of toothpaste without someone in your household complaining? Big business, government, manufacturing are all resistant to change (well said, CauseWired.)
- Nonprofits have to be good stewards. If NPO's changed their strategy every time the blogosphere got all hot and bothered about the next new thing, we'd all be holding virtual events in Second Life. We owe some caution-before-action to our donors and to those we serve by our mission. We should not be first in the pool. We should at least make sure it is full of water before diving in.
- Free is so not free. Managing social networking sites takes staff time - a luxury most nonprofits do not have. At my org, we are fortunate to have 1.5 people managing our social networking profiles (in addition to managing a host of other things, of course), but I know how lucky we are. You have to devote time to it to do it well.
- Top 100 on Twitter. Notice anything about what those folks have in common? Most of them don't have day jobs! Or at least not 9-5 jobs. They are celebrities. And many have a staff of people to either tweet for them or ply them with content. They are free to tweet on about the particularities of their day and it is still going to be more widely read than anything I could possibly post about the amazing work my NPO does. God that's depressing.
- Shouldn't quality of followers matter? Here's the deal. We're selective. Here's why: We actually use our Twitter channel to listen. I scan our followers' tweets quite a bit. Not just when they mention us, but their everyday tweets. Why? Because I actually want to know, what are they interested in? What types of posts are they retweeting? Are our followers more liberal or more conservative? It's fascinating. But I don't want to wade through pages and pages of followers telling me how to "Get more followers instantly" or "Check out my barely legal photos." So we screen new followers, and if they are spammers, we block them. You can't tell me Ashton screens all 3 million + of his followers.
Seth, I'm sorry; I have to call you out on this one. You've got it all wrong.
Monday, September 14, 2009
It's all about the thank you
Wunderkind Chris Brogan has yet another great post up today about the importance of saying thank you. I could not agree more.
One of my work projects that I am most proud of is a team-led idea of creating a video of my organization's beneficiaries who had been helped by my organization, and we asked, on camera, what they would say to a donor if they had the opportunity. Each one chose to say "thank you" in the most heartfelt and genuine way - it was beautiful.
We launched this video, via an e-mail and a social network push right around thanksgiving and the response was overwhelming. We received more than two dozen e-mails from recipients stating they were humbled by the video and that they were honored and inspired to have an opportunity to serve the poor overseas. We intentionally had no ask in the e-mail, but our year-end campaign (which started a week later), did spectacularly, despite the tough economic climate. It was so well received that we are planning to make this an annual event around Thanksgiving.
Whether the "thank you" video increased the year-end campaign's response is indiscernible, but judging from the people that took the time to write in, taking the time to thank them - and most importantly to give them the opportunity to hear it from someone they have helped - seemed to have an incredibly powerful effect.
It is also posted to youtube here.
One of my work projects that I am most proud of is a team-led idea of creating a video of my organization's beneficiaries who had been helped by my organization, and we asked, on camera, what they would say to a donor if they had the opportunity. Each one chose to say "thank you" in the most heartfelt and genuine way - it was beautiful.
We launched this video, via an e-mail and a social network push right around thanksgiving and the response was overwhelming. We received more than two dozen e-mails from recipients stating they were humbled by the video and that they were honored and inspired to have an opportunity to serve the poor overseas. We intentionally had no ask in the e-mail, but our year-end campaign (which started a week later), did spectacularly, despite the tough economic climate. It was so well received that we are planning to make this an annual event around Thanksgiving.
Whether the "thank you" video increased the year-end campaign's response is indiscernible, but judging from the people that took the time to write in, taking the time to thank them - and most importantly to give them the opportunity to hear it from someone they have helped - seemed to have an incredibly powerful effect.
It is also posted to youtube here.
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