Tag Archives ⇒ nonprofits

Quakers find that sharing solar electricity is possible but laws and regulations make it complicated

April 27, 2018
· Martin Kelley

Quak­ers find that shar­ing solar elec­tric­i­ty is pos­si­ble but laws and reg­u­la­tions make it complicated

The process proved dif­fi­cult more for legal than tech­ni­cal rea­sons, he said, and Con­cord Quak­ers hope its suc­cess “will inspire oth­er church­es, non­prof­its, and pri­vate home­own­ers to form their own groups.”

http://​www​.con​cord​mon​i​tor​.com/​s​o​l​a​r​-​p​o​w​e​r​-​q​u​a​k​e​r​-​c​a​n​t​e​r​b​u​r​y​-​g​r​o​u​p​-​n​e​t​-​m​e​t​e​r​i​n​g​-​1​7​1​2​9​177

Beth Kantor on the G+ Nonprofit Brand pages:

November 9, 2011
· Martin Kelley

“I’m try­ing to avoid being seduced by Shiny Object Syn­drome. It makes non­prof­its and indi­vid­u­als to adopt the lat­est cool social tool based on peer pres­sure, buzz, or a strange desire to be one of the first. It can also dis­tract you from your pri­or­i­ty to do list.”

Seems sen­si­ble advice.

Embed­ded Link

Google + Non­prof­it Brand Pages
Why does Google +  launch new stuff when I’m on a book dead­line!!   The long await­ed brand pages on Google + are here.    I put a post out on Google + 

Google+: Reshared 1 times
Google+: View post on Google+

The Limits of the Real Time Web

October 19, 2009
· Martin Kelley

Beth Kan­tor’s non­prof­it blog has an good arti­cle ask­ing about the pos­si­bil­i­ties for real-time web inter­ac­tion and asks whether it’s pos­si­ble for the web to let some­one be in two places at the same time:

What inter­ests me is if this is the next evo­lu­tion of the social web -
what is the cul­ture shift that needs to hap­pen with­in a non­prof­it to
embrace it?  Of course, I want to also know what the val­ue or benefit
is to nonprofits?

For
me, the eye-opening moment of real-time col­lab­o­ra­tion came last win­ter when I was plan­ning a con­fer­ence with two friends. The three of us knew each oth­er pret­ty well and we had all
met each oth­er one-on-one but we had nev­er been in the same room togeth­er (this would­n’t hap­pen until the first evening of the con­fer­ence we were co-leading!). A month to go we sched­uled a con­fer­ence call to hash out details.

I got on Skype from my New Jer­sey home and called Robin on her Bay Area land­line and Wess on his cell­phone in Los Ange­les. The mixed tele­pho­ny was fun enough, but the
amaz­ing part came when we brought our com­put­ers into the con­ver­sa­tion. With­in min­utes we had opened up a shared Google Doc file and started
cut­ting and past­ing agen­da items. Some­one made a
ref­er­ence to a video, found it on Youtube and sent it to the oth­er two
by Twit­ter. Wess had a sec­ondary wiki going, we were book­mark­ing resources on Deli­cious and send­ing links by instant messenger.

This is qual­i­ta­tive­ly dif­fer­ent from the two-places-at-once scenario
that Beth Kan­tor was imag­in­ing because we were using real-time web tools to be more present with one
anoth­er. Our atten­tion was more focused on the work at hand.

I’m more skep­ti­cal about non­prof­its engag­ing in the live tweet­ing phe­nom­e­non – fast-pace, real-time updates on Twit­ter and oth­er “micro-blogging” ser­vices. These tend to be so
much use­less noise. How use­ful can we be if our atten­tion is so divided?

Last week a non­prof­it I fol­low used Twit­ter to cov­er a press
con­fer­ence. I’m sor­ry to say that the flood of tweets amount­ed to a lot of use­less triv­ia. So what that the
politi­cian you invit­ed actu­al­ly showed up in the room? That he actually
walked to the podi­um? That he actu­al­ly start­ed talk­ing? That he ticked
through your talk­ing points? These are all things we knew would happen
when the press con­fer­ence was announced. There was no NEWs in this and no take-away that could get me more involved.

What would have been useful
were links to back­ground issues, a five-things-you-do list, and a five
minute wrap-up video released with­in an hour of the even­t’s end. They
could have been coor­di­nat­ed in such a way to ramp up the real time buzz: if they had post­ed an Twit­ter update every half
hour or so w/one select­ed high­light and a link to a live Ustream​.tv link I
prob­a­bly would have checked it out. The dif­fer­ence is that I would have
cho­sen to have my work­day inter­rupt­ed by all of this extra activ­i­ty. In the online
econ­o­my, atten­tion is the cur­ren­cy and any unusu­al activ­i­ty is
a kind of mugging.

When I talk to clients, I invari­ably tell that “social media” is inher­ent­ly social, which is to say that it’s about peo­ple com­mu­ni­cat­ing. The excite­ment we bring to our every­day com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the judg­ment we show in shap­ing the mes­sage is much more impor­tant than the Web 2.0 tool de jour.

Ginny Christensen, Educational Consultant

May 22, 2009
· Martin Kelley

Strategy for GrowthGin­ny Chris­tensen is the force behind Strat­e­gy for Growth, LLC, a Wyn­cote, PA con­sult­ing firm that pro­vides strate­gic plan­ning, board devel­op­ment, exec­u­tive coach­ing, and lead­er­ship team devel­op­ment for inde­pen­dent schools and non­prof­its. The site is fair­ly sim­ple. It’s built in Word­Press and has rudi­men­ta­ry e‑commerce with a Pay­pal option for pur­chas­ing books.

Vis­it: Strat​e​gy​For​Growth​.com

Nonprofits and Social Media

May 5, 2009
· Martin Kelley

I’d like to talk today about social media and non­prof­its. I’ve had a cou­ple of inter­est­ing projects late­ly help­ing non­prof­its put togeth­er Face­book Pages, LinkedIn Groups and Twit­ter sites. I think this is an excit­ing way to reach out to audi­ence members. 

Today: Email Lists

Over the last few years we’ve focused on email lists. We all have big email lists – tens of thou­sands of users, seg­ment­ed all sorts of dif­fer­ent ways. We send out dozens of emails a week and they end up seem­ing not spam.

Face­book Pages

A new era is com­ing with social media. A big change is Face­book Pages. These are geared toward adver­tis­ers although you don’t need to have a Face­book adver­tis­ing cam­paign to use them. In March 2009, Face­book redesigned Pages to act much more like typ­i­cal user pro­files: there’s a wall, there’s an activ­i­ty stream, and you can asso­ciate dif­fer­ent appli­ca­tions with them. 

Two things about Pages are excit­ing. One is the activ­i­ty stream. Peo­ple who sign up as “fans” of your Page see what you’re putting out in their indi­vid­ual stream. They’ll log into Face­book and see that mes­sages like “Jen just got engaged!” or “Joe is hav­ing a bad hair day” and that your orga­ni­za­tion is hav­ing some great event com­ing up this week­end. You’re seen in the asso­ci­a­tion of hap­py news from their friends. It’s dif­fer­ent from a spam­mish email because it’s com­ing in with the con­text of their friends, which is very pow­er­ful for publicity.

The oth­er nice thing about Face­book Pages is that they’re pub­lic. A lot of por­tions of Face­book aren’t but mak­ing Pages pub­lic means you can point to them from your web­site or oth­er social media campaigns.

I think Face­book fan groups are going to be the new email list. They are the way we’ll be able to reach out to peo­ple. I’m very excit­ed about this because there’s all sorts of easy mul­ti­me­dia pos­si­bil­i­ties. You can inte­grate with Youtube, with Twit­ter, with pod­casts, etc., embed­ded for fans of your Face­book page to see as it’s hap­pen­ing. This is much more excit­ing than some of the emails that we send out. They are also more inter­ac­tive because fans can post things on your fan walls so you can have con­ver­sa­tions on your sites.

Inti­mate, imme­di­ate, engaging

What the smart non­prof­its are going to be doing is a lot of post­ing in a style that’s authen­tic and inti­mate and less wor­ried about being slick than we’ve typ­i­cal­ly been.

What I would love to see non­prof­its doing is to get seri­ous about video. I’m not talk­ing about fan­cy video, haul­ing in video­g­ra­phers for six months shoot­ing a three minute slick com­mer­cial. Get an inex­pen­sitve video recorder and start doing five minute inter­views with the peo­ple your orga­ni­za­tion serves. This will dif­fer depend­ing on your orga­ni­za­tion’s focus. One advan­tage to sim­ple videos is that you can con­vince even the busiest of your inter­vie­wees to take out a few min­utes. You make these videos and post them to Youtube, Vimeo or direct­ly to Face­book video. It does­n’t mat­ter where they host­ed but you’ll have to make sure they’re embed­ded on your Face­book fan page. 

Build­ing our Face­book Fan Page

How to direct? You can direct in the emails you’re send­ing out or through oth­er sources. Twit­ter is a great way of direct­ing peo­ple to what’s hap­pen­ing: you send out a 140-character “tweet” with an inter­est­ing tease about the video you’ve pro­duced and a link to the Face­book fan page.

The whole goal is to get Face­book fans. Once you’re in as a fan, you show up in their activ­i­ty streams. All the fans get to see the events you’re orga­niz­ing, the videos. If you have extra tick­ets to an upcom­ing event, post about it because peo­ple will see it imme­di­ate­ly. It’s a won­der­ful way to reach peo­ple quick­ly in a way that’s not as intru­sive as email (I sus­pect a lot of younger users are actu­al­ly check­ing their Face­book home­page more often than their emails!).

The New Non­prof­it Outreach

I’d love to see a lot more of these inti­mate, almost home-made videos going up on Face­book fan pages and using fan pages as a way of con­nect­ing with peo­ple. We can think of these as the new email list.

I would strong­ly encour­age non­prof­its to use all of these these media to rein­force their mes­sage and to find new ways to reach their audi­ences in a much more engag­ing, inti­mate way. 

— —  —  — –

Mar­tin Kel­ley is a web devel­op­er and social media con­sul­tant spe­cial­iz­ing in non­prof­its. This post is a loose tran­scrip­tion of his video, Non­prof­its and Social Media. This essay is also avail­able on the Mar​tinKel​ley​.com Face­book fan page.