Solvation

Social Media Strategy for Non-profits (& Small Businesses) - in 5 Steps

This question came up, and I'm going to give you the answer that has evolved over five years of thinking in this space, first on the Board of the Fremont Education Foundation, and most recently through my work in online community development for The Groupery.

What's the best way to launch a social media strategy for a small non-profit (or business)?

(1) A blog. This is your content management system and can be your website. You can have one tab that explains about your organization, one or more for programs, and blog posts that ensures your public presence is absolutely current! I'd suggest considering making everyone on the Board an author, with each person responsible for an article on a rotating schedule with a frequency that is manageable. If there are five people on the Board and once per month is plenty, then fine, do a weekly article.  The Board can come up with content guidelines, and in the spirit of "more frequent is better," (and yes, yes, my blog is a victim of "the cobbler's children go unshod"!) I would suggest that a survey of the relevant news is just fine. Have as a regular part of the monthly Board meeting what information can and should be released to the blog and who will do it. Blogs are much easier to manage than traditional websites - it's likely if you choose a hosted blog someone within your organization can take that on without even being a "technology person."

Another advantage of a blog? Your sponsors can have more than their logo on your webpage - if it provides value to them, you can offer to allow them to contribute a guest posts!

(2) Then, I would put everyone in the organization on Facebook, and have them set up to follow the blog on Networked Blogs. Some may need help getting through connecting with those friends and people they know who are already on Facebook; for others they may want help setting up two (or more) different types of "friends." 

Even for those who do absolutely nothing on Facebook, being connected to your community there, will ensure that everyone you are connected to will have the opportunity to see your blog posts. Other than having the blog posts show up on their profile, people in the organization don't need to do a thing on Facebook.

(I don't think a Fan page is as critical than this first step plus the ones that follow, but of course there are ways to do advertising, outreach, and publicize events on Facebook that can be very helpful. Also, in some communities, MySpace would be a better choice than Facebook, or doing both would be warranted.)

(3) Then I would also set up Twitter accounts. The organization will have a Twitter account and set up a list of people in the community and news feeds that it follows and also announcing each blog post. Each person will have a private Twitter account that is for the purpose of discussing major donor account and the nuances of community connection in a timely way "Just met Mr. Targetdonor at local event - very interested in xyz program but wants to be alone until after holidays." This ensures a coordinated and respectful approach to donors, even in small communities. If committees or working groups would like to do the same thing to communicate small amounts of information quickly, that can be done on Twitter also. (If desired, people can have public Twitter accounts too, but it's of secondary benefit.)

Another advantage of an organizational Twitter presence is that if you serve a community that has no internet access but does have cell phones, you can be more present in their lives. Particularly in this case, the organization should list those people by name who are contributing "tweets." It's important to know who you're talking to!

(4) Next, I would set up a monitor for the issue area(s) in which the organization is involved. There are several blog and Twitter (etc.) scraping software packages that make this much more efficient depending on what you need, including whether someone in the close by environment is publicly airing grievances online but not bringing them to the non-profit. Then the results of that are in one place for a quick survey every day of what's going on.

It is a natural progression that once you know what is going on, it's a far better way to do media and community relations, because you can step in when the topic is raised in an important venue. This can be a good way to for some key volunteers to contribute.

(5) Finally, I would create a YouTube channel, and encourage the non-profit to tell stories about themselves there. There are many freelancers in the video arena, and several good story tellers. (I know some and can lead you to others.) There are many ways to get the message out with social media that are compelling and relatively inexpensive or even free, and are also fun! A flip video camera is under $200 and fits in your pocket!

Differentiating Spiritual from Social

Begin reading at the bottom.

When you finished (or read it the first time), did you feel pain?

Many do. That pain is evidence that we're connected. We imagine these two young men; we imagine or remember our own losses. That's Spiritual. Even those of us who do not know these people nevertheless feel their pain.

I need to pause here. I do also want to say how heartbreaking it was to hear, and express my condolences to those who knew Vijay personally, his family and Mike in particular.

I'm drawing connections into the financial world after the jump.

Financial and Social Capital - an Example

I just posted a financial analysis I did in 2006. The challenge was to canvas the entire space of novel materials (except bio), with particular interest in nanotechnology; look for a viable publicly traded alternative energy company; and then buy and hold that for three years with no risk management (e.g. options).

The name of the company has been obscured, but here's the graph. It was $9 when I recommended it, and roughly $31 now. (Between $25-30 in June '09, so the ROI would be about 3x.)

Of course I was looking not only at traditional financial performance but also applied social capital ideas to the analysis.

Look in the direction you want to go!

The Financial Times has recently posted a few informative and anxiety-provoking articles about the US economy.

The first is about the degree of underemployment as gauged by food stamp applications, and notes that now 40% of applicants have some earned income. (“I’m sort of stunned, it seems like a dire warning . . . that even the jobs people are retaining in this recession aren’t at the wage level and hours level that they need to provide for their families,” said Heidi Shierholz, economist at the Economic Policy Institute.) 

The second is about the financial capability of cities. ("For 2009, 88 per cent of city finance officers said their cities were less able to meet fiscal needs than in 2008 [up from 64% when asked last year]... Nine out of 10 predicted the situation would be worse in 2010.")

The data's important, because we need accurate status checks, but the anxiety and handwringing has everything to do with expectations.  If we were on our way *up* we'd be in an entirely different mental space right now! We have a lot of resources: financial resources (still!), knowledge, skill, creativity, trust, love, health, beauty. We do need an accurate snapshot of what we have, but more importantly we need to know where we want to go, and going "to where we were before" cannot possibly be the right answer!

Here’s the secret – if you’re in a skid, whether understeer or oversteer, look where you want to go. Let me say that one more time, because it’s so important – look in the direction you want to go. Your hands will naturally turn that way too, and you’ll be doing the right thing.

If you look at the wall, you’ll hit the wall.

So, folks... where to?

SoCap09: About the FOOD!

(Photo: Julie Blaustein)

One of the things I heard so frequently at the conference that I had to write up a post about it: the catering was AMAZING.

And the Flying Goat coffee was lovely, and never ran out!

I spoke with Britt Galler of Acre Gourmet, a "value-driven business" that integrates delicious, healthy food and environmentally friendly practices.  Her focus is on seasonal, local, fresh produce and food cooked from scratch in order to maintain quality, and avoid processed ingredients. Her goal as caterer was to present a diversity of local products with options that were high protein, some dairy-free, some wheat-free. 

Britt loved the energy at SoCap09, and was happy to see so many people eat so well and enjoy it so much! As she said, "It's nice to be a part of something so dynamic!"

Britt says she during catering engagements, she focuses on the quality of flavors and an elegant but not pretentious presentation.  However, Acre Gourmet does a limited number of such engagements and is very selective about the opportunities they choose -- they look to partner with people of similar vision.

Not only for those people involved in fair trade and supply chain sourcing questions, but also simply for those who live in the San Francisco area, or come for extended visits, I did want to get into the details of the food supply chain. 

I asked her about a favorite salad of mine. It turns out that it was based on a quinoa grain product, distributed by Alter Ego Fair Trade, an exhibitor at the conference.

She purchases a lot from the Marin Farmer's Market, with locations throughout Alameda county as well as Marin and San Francisco. The crackers were from the Rustic Bakery in Larkspur, the stuffed flatbreads were from Afghan family company East & West. Bars were from 18 Rabbits

The cheese was, roughly, 80% from California cheesemakers, and meats were from Fra'amani.

Thanks again for a lovely culinary experience amidst so many intellectual ones!

Day 2 Blog Roundup for SoCap09

Marc Dangeard posts a summary of the still outstanding questions and what was interesting to him.

The Philanthropic Family talks of a new API for finding members of the impact investing community.

Beth Kanter talks about socially responsible schwag as a metaphor

Nathaniel Whittemore puts out another great post for Change.org on punishing short-term exploitation; more digestible than my out-there post from yesterday.

Anshni Mohnot covers SoCap09 for PopTech and did a recap of the forecasting talk.

And TriplePundit did their own recap of Day 2.

GIIRs and IRIS

The closing plenary on Day 2 was a panel moderated by Antony Bugg-Levine of the Rockefeller Foundation. Andrew Kassoy of B Lab, Brian Trelsted of Acumen Fund, and Chris Park of Deloitte talked about the state of standardization and why having a common set of standards is important to engaging in the market.

The sentiment was summarized, "What is it going to take for us to go from the promise of entrepreneurial energy to create a world we all want to see? Many of us are incredibly humbled by how much is left to do. What is it going to take so that we can be confident that we’re on track?"

Towards this end, a rating system, GIIRs was introduced as a top-level "quality of investment" summary metric, like "5 stars."  It's built over the IRIS framework, which can be viewed and commented upon.

I am most interested in governance of the evolution of standards, and how one might be part of this process. As someone who has spent time within the technology industry, I'm familiar with how technologists do standardization.  I'm eager to hear the developments pursuant to this paragraph, from the FAQ:

• How will the taxonomy be updated and revised over time?
  • A governing body will be created that will oversee the evolution of the IRIS taxonomy. This body will likely be housed at the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) with one or two full time employees working to establish a system that allows for the revision of the taxonomy over time as comments and feedback are obtained from the broad stakeholder universe.

Sustainability, financial markets, and a crazy thought or two

After this morning's plenary panels, I was having this weird thought, triggered by something Charly Kleissner said (I don't recall specifically what, but I'm strongly aligned with his thinking): what if there's such a thing as too much liquidity? We're all taught about how important liquidity is in the function of financial markets, and how an illiquid market in particular will not allow prices to move to the "correct" place.

But we know that buying a house means people get off the couch and deal with community issues. We know that a 'transient' community often is less desireable in terms of safety, in perception if not also in fact.  So why would we assume that equity investments in firm should be as liquid as possible?

What if we did something like utterly change the tax structure so that the longer you hold a trade, the less tax you pay?  (And simultaneously limit the number of accounts - there's a compliance issue here, but that's resolvable.) Instead of paying longterm capital gains, you DON'T do any such thing; you pay a "flip tax" that gets increasingly steep the more frequently that you trade.

The logic? If people were incented to buy and hold, they would need to invest on the basis of long term value creation. The longer they hold, the more the idea "socially responsible" becomes a hard reality and not a "soft" term.

It's not as risky as it sounds, either. We do know that it's the creation and development of intangible assets that eventually leads to financially (and socially) productive ones.  By expanding our understanding of those mechanisms, and tracking that information, the market could very simply be brought more inline with our values, incenting entrepreneurs and investors to make decisions with longterm social benefit.

It brings me to the other crazy idea: the issue was raised in the second panel this morning of what the new "social market" asset class will look like? I wonder if it would make sense to talk about an asset class specifically called "Intangible Assets" that are focused on the creation of one or more intangible assets? In this way we could begin talking about portfolio diversification and a blended approach fairly explicitly, compare returns in different economic environments, provide room for traditional and alternative investors to coexist and experiment, and examine the interaction among different intangible subclasses (How does air quality affect education returns? If you didn't already realize, asthma is a huge component of absenteeism.) 

What do you think?

SoCap09 Day 1: Let's talk about the bricks, not the blueprints

I'm at SoCap09.  It's an event populated by people who are innovative, intellectual, bonded with other people and society, and -- to some degree -- idealistic. There are a lot of people here that are thought leaders and entrepreneurs.

So I suppose it's only natural to have many different visions being expressed. That's how entrepreneurs, policymakers, public speakers and corporate leaders communicate a cohesive plan, after all.

But there's a hazard that's easy for even The Economist to succumb to, which is talking about the space in "today's" terms: financial markets vs. social good. Either/or. Oil/water. One sector or another.

In the opening plenary, there seemed to be concern by some for-profit entrepreneurs in the audience that they were being overshadowed by non-profit ventures.  While there have been many discussions and the closing plenary today based on a lot of deep thinking and objective research on how philanthropy and capitalism merge, I want to push into a level that's deeper, still. The points are straightforward:

(1) Creating something of value is an independent action, and doesn't have anything to do with what you exchange it for, or whether or not it's exhanged at all. In other words, if the tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, yes, there's still a sound.

(2) We need to ask: In our daily activities, what is it that we're creating that has value? Some people call those things "intangible assets," namely knowledge, relationships, processes, mental and physical health, etc. These are the "bricks" which allow us to build.

(3) The only difference between the financial sector and the "social" sector is what the end use those assets is, what we build with the bricks.

If all we measure in the financial sector is financial return, then the financial sector is almost invariably going to be a net brick user, which means the Return On Bricks is negative.  (A typical exception to this happens when a lot of learning takes place through R&D, or a company creates a disruptive innovation that is socially beneficial).  In contrast, the "social sector" strives to maximize its Return on Bricks, and doesn't spend a lot of time focused on the return on financial capital.

But in either case, everyone needs more bricks! So this dichotomy between the financial and the social sector is a veneer.

The longer we focus the conversation on what is the right mix of financial vs. social effort and try to fine-tune the return and outcomes, the longer we miss the truly gigantic wins that will come when we begin to measure and optimize Return On Bricks, regardless of what we're building. If we are to be a sustainable world -- and we can't exist indefinitely without at least understanding what we are doing "on speculation" -- we must focus our economic work on replenishing our bricks.

Practicum: Cleaning Twitter Searches

I'm ecstatic to be able assist a little bit with the Social Capital Markets 2009 conference, particularly in community building.  One of the tasks I'm working on involves cleaning up lists of people who are Tweeting.

If you've got a tool that does this already, good god, please let me know!  But if you're like me and after some fruitless searching decided that misusing excel is always fun, here's an algorithm to follow:

1. Search! (In my case, I search for #socap09: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23socap09 )
2. Copy and paste the results into an excel spreadsheet. It will look dreadful, but don't worry.
3. Sort on Column A
4. On the DATA menu, choose "Text to Column...", choose to use delimiters, and then choose "space" and "other", where other is a colon (:)
5. Sort on Column A
6. There will be some number with a blank first cell. Select those blank cells (not the whole column!)  On the EDIT menu, choose "Delete," and remove this first cell and choose "shift left."
7. Sort on Column A
8. Delete everything except column A. This will leave you with a list of TwitterIDs plus some dreck.
9. Delete those things that are obviously not TwitterIDs, such as *, # and actual numbers.
10. Again, choose text to column, using the delimiter "other" and chosing the underscore ( _ )
11. You've now broken apart the picture file names into separate columns. TwitterIDs only need one column (usually, exception below). Sort on Column B
12. The top results will almost all be file names for pictures, and the last word in the last column wll be "normal". The exception will be when someone uses an underscore in their TwitterID (such as the_real_shaq). There typically aren't many of those people compared to people with pictures; so scan and find those. Put the correct TwitterID in column A.  (NOTE: finding those TwitterIDs with an underscore is the only manual process. If you can think of a way to do that in an automated way on excel, let me know.)
13. Sort on Column B
14. Remove everything with something in Column B (because you've rescued the real TwitterIDs)
15. Go to the DATA menu and select PivotTable Report... and run this report. On the last step of the wizard, select "Layout," and drag whatever is available (should be a Twitter ID, in cell A1) to the side column of the pivot table and again into the center field of the report. Finish the pivot report.
16. Copy the left column of the pivot table and from the EDIT menu, choose "Paste Special..." and select values.

Voila - a clean list.