Points of Light annual Conference on Volunteering and Service kicks off today.  Best Selling Author Adam Grant, “Give and Take” will be doing a big session called “It’s About Science! Unpacking the Relationship Between Volunteering, the Brain and the Body” on June 20th.  I was invited to a briefing session with other media and bloggers to learn more.

I first head of this book after reading this article in the New York Times back in March, 2013.  I immediately ordered a copy and I’ve been reading and re-reading it.   So many of the ideas resonate that it is one of those books where I’m highlighting and making notes.  So much of it applies to those of us who work in the social change sector and have a deep sense of giving back.

The main thesis in the book is that in a networked world success depends  on how we interact with others.  only Grant suggests there are three different styles:  Givers (those who give to others without an expect for...

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Note from Beth: This one of my favorite photos of a workshop I designed and facilitated at SXSW called “Peer Learning Session for Nonprofit Social Media Managers.”    The idea was to get folks who do social media for nonprofits sharing best practices about social media adoption and culture change by balancing brief content delivery with lots of interaction.   This was a face-to-face session, but the learning was extended online afterwards, albeit briefly,  in an organic way on twitter using a hashtag “npsmpeer.”

I’ve been interested in this sort of “self-ignited” peer learning or what has been called “Peeragogy” and that I experienced briefly last year as part of creating a handbook on the topic facilitated by Howard Rheingold and in many private and public Facebook or LinkedIn Groups where nonprofit professionals share best practices.

But both of the peer learning designs are for nonprofit practitioners who have fully...

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Note from Beth: Two years ago on this blog,  Porter Gale published a guest post asking “Can Social Media Save Lives?” and described how Amit Gupta was leveraging his network and social media to find a bone marrow match.  This story became a case study in “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” to illustrate the value of crowdsourcing and how to measure the return.

Taryn Degnan picks up on this them of using social media to save lives to share her observations about the use of social media to find organ donors and her own personal story.

Social Media is Saving Lives. How’s That for ROI? by Taryn Degnan

• Pasadena mom uses social media to find organ donor for daughter.
• Kwirti Dwivedi finds a kidney for ailing mom via social media.
• Facebook Organ Donor Initiative Prompts 100,000 Users To Select New Option.

Friends, those news headlines are real, and it means that something wild and crazy is happening online. Perfect strangers are connecting through...

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Note from Beth: If I could wave a magic wand, and ask for a wish related to my work to come true, it would be this:  I’d like to spend a year to attend conferences where I don’t know a lot of the content or people and learn and network and blog about the experience.   One of those conferences would be the Personal Democracy Forum.   Well, a girl can dream, right?

The next best thing is to have colleagues who have attended amazing conferences like Personal Democracy Forum and share what they learned.    I’m grateful that Kate Wing has offered up this guest post about her experience at PDF 2013.

Reflections and Notes from Personal Democracy Forum 2013

The 50% conference rule

Last week, I went to the Personal Democracy Forum conference for the first time, and I came away brimming with new ideas for my work. I’d read about PdF in Steven Johnson’s book “Future Perfect” and heard about them from Rachel Weidinger of Upwell. But what was a grantmaker who works...

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Note from Beth: I’m thrilled to participate in the LinkedIn Influencer Program where I get to write regular posts about leadership, failure, analytics, big data, presenting, and training from a nonprofit perspective.   But even better,  I’ve had a chance to connect with some of the other amazing folks who write regularly as part of this program.    You see, I really enjoy cross-disciplinary learning from other fields and other perspectives.

One of the participants is Jonah Berger, Best Selling author of the book, Contagious.   We have had a few exchanges about “going viral” and whether it is just plain luck or if there was a science behind it.    He offered to share this guest post.  Enjoy.

hViral’s Secret Formula a guest post by Jonah Berger

Want to know why things go viral?  Why some social causes or programs get more word of mouth? Let me tell you a secret.  It’s not luck.

Viral has been seen as marketing’s Holy Grail.  From the Harlem...

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Stanford University lecturer Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen teaches students at Stanford about how to master philanthropy.   The author of the book, Giving 2.0, has just released all her teaching notes and syllabi, along with philanthropy library.  The idea is simple – by open sourcing her materials, she hopes to inspire more colleges to incorporate courses on philanthropy in their curriculum.

I first heard Laura speak when she launched her book, Giving 2.0, at Stanford two years ago.   Her ideas resonated and connected really well with the a lot of my work.  At the time, I was working on “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” with co-author KD Paine.  After the book launch, I asked her if she would consider writing the foreword to our book and she said yes!

In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal,  Laura shared why she is releasing the curriculum and the basic frameworks.   The goals for the Giving 2.0 ProjectU are:

1. To provide any college or...

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Mentors: Bobby Deleon and Michel Daniel and students from ECHS - Speed Networking

Note from Beth: My friend Porter Gale has just launched a new book called “Your Network is Net Worth.”  Porter’s definition about networking is about charting your own course, following your passions, and making meaningful connections, which in turn increase your happiness and productivity.   Her  book shares the secrets of how to do this.

Porter  has been a guest poster to this blog in the past and she offered to write up this guest post about mentoring. As one who has always considered their work in the sector a “calling” versus a job, I’ve been lucky to have some amazing mentors.  Therefore, giving back to others in this space  is something I’ve have always felt was very important and one reason that as much as I could tried to connect with younger people or new comers to the nonprofit online space.    Porter has great wisdom about this topic...

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Note from Beth: I am looking forward to the NCVS Conference.  I will be doing  a panel on using social media as part of volunteer recruitment and looking forward to hearing author Adam Grant talk about the ideas in his book, Give and Take.     Another topic at the conference that I’m curious about is the notion of leveraging  networks for capacity building and for career development for young professionals.  Ben Duda is executive director of AmeriCorps Alums and graciously agreed to share some thoughts on this as guest post.

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How Nonprofits Measure Success of Video

See3, YouTube and Edelman have released a new report and guide for nonprofits about using video.  The report, “Into Focus:  Benchmarks for Video and A Guide for Creators,”  is based on a survey of 500 nonprofits and interviews with experts (including me).   The report describes current nonprofit use, adoption challenges, and best practices.  Free webinars are being offered to share the report.  You can download the report here (with email registration) or sign up for one of the free webinars here.

The big takeaway:

Nonprofits overwhelmingly agree that video is crucial to their communications, but many feel they do not know how to use it effectively or measure its impact – yet.

Some more detailed findings from the survey:

1.    Video is important, and getting more important

·         80% of respondents said video is important to their origination today

·         91% believe video will become more...

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I’ve been facilitating a peer learning group with Packard Foundation grantees during the past year with a goal of improving measurement practice for social media and based on my book, “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit.”    Each organization is working on an action learning project that is a small, doable measurement project that applies the frameworks and steps in the book.   Each month, we go deep into a practice step – both on the individual practitioner level as well as the organizational practice level.    As the facilitator and SME,  I provide some content, but participants do a lot of sharing and presenting as well.  This helps spread good practices.

This group started the process with doing the hard work of identifying success and key performance indicators, but applying a organizational process to get everyone on the same page and reporting back.    Once settled, we took deep dives into understanding how to collect, analyze, and visualize data...

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A few days ago, I noticed that my long-time nonprofit technology colleague, Ruby Sinreich, had her digital life hacked and stolen from her.   The hacker accessed many of her accounts and locked her out, and took over her Twitter, deleting her followers and changing the profile.    Chronicled on her tumblr blog,  it took her days to reach humans at different platforms to get help, faced many challenges, and all the while the hacker teased her and tried to sell her Twitter account on a hackers forum.   She was able to finally take back control of her accounts after a very stressful ordeal.

This could happen to any of us.   So, how can you make your social media and other account more secure?

Twitter and other social media services offer verification logins.    That means if try to log on from an unfamiliar IP address, the service will send a code via SMS to your mobile phone and you enter that code.  That way only you can log into your account.    Here’s more on ...

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Source: Juice Lab Chart Chooser

Last month, Stephanie Evergreen wrote an awesome guest post called “Six Steps to Great Charts” with lots of practical tips for using the Excel chart feature to visualize your social media measurement data.  The six steps:

Step 1:  Which Chart is Best?
Step 2:  Use Color To Emphasize
Step 3:  Delete Data You Don’t Need
Step 4:  Directly Label
Step 5:  Save As A Template
Step 6:  Annotate

For step 1, she suggested using Juice Analytics chart chooser tool.     I wanted to learn more about what particular chart format is better suited to visualize a particular comparison or insight from social media data.   And, can the process of selecting the right chart format help you better understand your data?   To help answer those questions, I consulted a classic,  ”Say It With Charts”  written by Gene Zelazny, Director of Visual Communications at McKinsey which is a sort of Strunk and White for...

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I’ve been curating resources on nonprofit measurement over on Scoop.It, with eye towards collecting useful material related to social media and social impact measurement.

Last week, I came across this excellent deck and blog post from the Knight Foundation’s VP of Strategy and Assessment, Mayur H. Patel.   The presentation was prepared for the Miami Philanthropy Conference and addresses a familiar issue:   Many nonprofits feel that demonstrating impact through performance measurement is a top priority for their programs and communications efforts including social media.  Despite this, when it is times to do measurement, many  feel that it is a daunting task.    How can we improve our measurement practice?

The deck and blog summarizes some key points and methods from three resources:

A lot of what we shared was drawn from three resources that we’ve found valuable in our work. Each comes at the topic of measurement from a different angle. Together they offer a...

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Two weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be in New Zealand, leading a workshop on social media and I facilitated a module on mindful social media.   It seemed very appropriate given that my host, Stephen Blyth, collaborated with Peter Sykes, CEO & Founder at Mangere East Family Service Centre and we held the workshop on a Marae.   Peter greeted me at the airport and as I got into the car I noticed a copy of Rheingold’s book NetSmart in the back seat.

Yesterday, this tweet from Howard Rheingold, author of NetSmart got my attention!  It is a simple, elegant way to train your attention while working online to keep mindful how you are spending your time.   As he says in his book, your attention is one of your most available assets.   Yet, we often squander it by not being mindful.   Mindful online is defined as not just going into auto pilot to update your FB status or scan your Twitter stream but to consciously think about all aspects of your digital actions.

...

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Source: Zazzle

How do you learn?  When you want to acquire a new skill or apply some new knowledge, do you learn by passively sitting and listening to an expert lecture for 90 minutes without a break and 150 PPT slides?   What do you actually retain?   And, what do you actually apply?   Or do you learn better when you get a chance to process the content every 15 minutes by thinking about it quietly or talking with a peer?   Do you concentrate better when you move around versus sitting for too long?

I know for myself that I don’t learn, retain, or apply when content is endlessly shared – even from expert – without a break.   If I can’t process what I hear by asking questions of the expert or checking in with another participate or sitting quietly and just thinking about what was shared, there is a point that I reach after about 15 minutes – it’s call “My Brain Is Full Up.”       I wondered whether or not I was just weird, so I...

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I’m getting a jump on my summer reading!    Colleagues Kari Dunn Saratovsky and Derrick Feldmann have published a new book called Cause for Change:  The Why and How of Nonprofit Millennial Engagement.  The book is based on their many years of research, convening, and consulting with nonprofits on how to engage with this younger generation.     The book is a must-read and their annual conference, MCON, is a must attend – if you want the latest thinking about strategy to engage younger people in the sector – both inside and outside of your nonprofit’s walls.

The book is a great read for nonprofit leaders of all generations.  It takes us through why it is important for nonprofits to connect with Millennials based on a good synthesis of recent research and follows through with informative chapters that will help your nonprofit build a solid strategy for connecting with the connected generation in your organization’s communication’s strategy.  It...

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Last month, during the Nonprofit Technology Conference plenary session on placing little bets and learning from failure,  we  issued a challenge to 1,000 nonprofits  in the audience.   Let’s do more than just give failure lip service,  let’s put it into practice and share learning from a failure or placing a “Little Bet.”     A ‘Little Bet” as defined by Peter Sims, author of the book – Little Bets, is a small action that you can take to discover something new.  It’s an affordable loss that leads to innovation.

Place a little bet & or share your #failure story… you could win a Surface! #13ntcbets ow.ly/k24ok

— Case Foundation (@CaseFoundation) April 13, 2013

The Case Foundation offered to give away a Microsoft Surface and so we issued a call to nonprofits to submit their “Little Bets” stories.  We received 18 fabulous stories about small fails in fundraising, project management, communications, social media,...

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Sunrise on Sacred Maori Land outside of Auckland, NZ

I’ve just returned from an amazing trip of facilitating workshops, discussions and master classes as well as a keynoting a conference on “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit”  in Australia and New Zealand.    It made me very happy to be teaching non-stop for almost two weeks.     I’m always learning as I help others learn.    Here’s a couple of reflections from my “trainer’s notebook.”

I started with a full-day workshop outside of Auckland called “The Networked NGO in New Zealand,” this workshop was for activist organizations and focused on strategy, measurement, and best practices for managing and implementing social media as a network.   Stephen Blyth, a nonprofit capacity builder who I met when I keynoted Connecting Up in 2008, hosted my trip to NZ and arranged for this workshop to take place on Makaurau Marae which is the land of Maori.

The workshop started...

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Note from Beth: I’ve just finished doing some social media workshops in New Zealand with Volunteering Auckland and now in Australia.  Next month,  I will be traveling to Washington, DC for the NCVS Conference and can’t wait.  I will be doing  a panel on using social media as part of volunteer recruitment.   While I’m still “down under,”  Michelle Nunn agreed to share this guest post about conference highlight

Get the Scoop at the National Conference on Volunteering and Service in Washington, DC #NCVS guest post by Michelle Nunn

I’m eager to let readers of Beth’s Blog in on the best, old-fashioned way to be a networked employee at a networked nonprofit dedicated to social change: Come to Points of Light’s annual Conference on Volunteering and Service in Washington, D.C. next month.

From June 19-22, more than 5,000 people from around the nation and the world will gather to discuss best practices in engaging volunteers and new ways people can...

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Note from Beth: Greetings from the Gold Coast in Australia.  I’m here to keynote Connecting Up Conference,  While I am in OZ,  I invited Jon Stahl to share this amazing case study.   Enjoy

For several years now, nonprofits have been investing time, energy and money building Facebook pages and working to engage supporters on Facebook. Unfortunately, as Beth has pointed out , Facebook doesn’t always make it easy to generate meaningful and measurable results that drive your mission or your bottom line.

About a year ago, Facebook began rolling out a series of important changes, most notably the launch of Facebook Open Graph, designed to empower app developers (like us here at ActionSprout) to create tools to help brands and organizations get more out of Facebook.

Over the past year, large corporate brands have embraced Facebook apps from companies like Wildfire (purchased by Google), Buddy Media, (now part of Salesforce) and WooBox, for things like coupons, sweepstakes, and...

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