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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Source: Gemma Correll – I Love Charts

Note from Beth: I just knew that I was going to start obsessing about charts and graphs after my Excel spreadsheet obsessions started.  I thought if I set up a tumblr blog curating great nonprofit spreadsheets, but the next logical step is create visualizations of your data.  What better way than in Excel.    I got into a wonderful conversation with Stephanie Evergreen, another nonprofit datanerd who loves spreadsheets who offered to write up this guest post about how to create the perfect graph.

Six Steps to Great Graphs By Stephanie Evergreen

Low budget? No programming skills? Me, too! Great data visualizations don’t necessarily require an expensive software package or a programmer on staff. Here is how you can work with what you already own, Excel, to increase the impact of your data visualizations. Let’s start with one basic dataset – a count of the number of followers, advocates, and donors for a non-profit over...

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Note From Beth: I’m on my way to Australia and New Zealand lead a series of workshops on Networked Nonprofits and Measurement, culminating with a keynote at this year’s ConnectingUp Conference in Australia, so expect to see a few interesting guest posts. I caught up with Danny Alpert at the NTC Conference in Minneapolis, MN where he briefed me on how he is using a “Transmedia” strategy to raise awareness and funding to support homeless services. He graciously agreed to pen this guest post while I was in transit to “down under.” Enjoy.

Transmedia – Making Change Across Mediums by Danny Alpert,  Executive Director, Kindling Group and Executive Producer, See3 Communications

I became a documentary filmmaker to tell meaningful stories that explore social issues and inspire change. When I started out, the “broadcast, festival, and screenings” model of distribution dictated community engagement strategies that were more linear, and limited. We...

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Flickr Photo by TomtheJet

I’m headed to New Zealand and Australia to facilitate workshops in both countries and to keynote the ConnectingUp Conference (Australia’s version of the Nonprofit Technology Conference).   I am excited for a return visit to Australia.   I delivered the keynote there in 2008 and taught a workshop, “Take Me To The Social Web.”     One of the workshop participants was Stephen Blyth of Common Knowledge - a long time nonprofit capacity builder and trainer – who invited me to come over to New Zealand to facilitate some workshops to NGOs and meet with funders who are interested in the peer learning and networked capacity building approach.  Stephen is an expert in many training methods so this will be an excellent co-learning experience.

I’m thrilled that one of the workshops will be held on Makaurau Marae which is the land of Maori.     The workshop will start with a welcoming ceremony – I couldn’t have...

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I was invited to present a key note at the Mekong ICT Camp in Thailand about nonprofits, social media, and measurement.   This event is a biannual training workshop on information, communication, and technologies for citizen media, community health, and civil society development in Mekong Region and included participants are coders, journalists, and NGO staff from Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam.   The camp took place in Cha-am, Petchburi, Thailand.  The camp was organized by Thai Fund Foundation in partnership with Opendream, , Thai Netizen Network, Frontier Foundation and Tactical Technology Collective.

The theme for the training was “Data, Data.”   Unfortunately, I could make it to Thailand, so I presented and lead a discussion remotely using Google Hangouts from California.  Here’s a few reflections about presenting remotely in locations outside of the US.

1.  Format: Our session was 90 minutes.   Tharum Bun, a blogger...

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I’m teaching a master class today in San Francisco for arts organizations for Theatre Bay Area.  This is a continuation of my work with TBA over the past 3-4 years.    The first year  I experimented with a peer design that included face-to-face workshops, action learning projects, and monthly calls back in 2010 called ArtsLab.  The second year in 2011, we did two sets of peer groups using workshops, action learning projects, and micro grants to encourage experimentation.

The third year now expands the program into a “train the trainer” model.    The master class is part of  a, NEA-funded experiment being conducted by arts service organizations like Theatre Bay Area all across the country. The goal to help their members, small arts organizations,  how to use social media and digital technologies to transform and energize their relationships with audiences, supporters, funding bodies and other arts groups.   My master class here in  San Francisco will be...

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As part of my work as Visiting Scholar at the Packard Foundation this year, I’m facilitating a peer learning group based on “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit” and the next session we are focusing on the sense-making step of measurement. This part of the measurement process is most the fun because it covers visualization, pattern recognition, and reflection.    I wanted to take a deeper dive into resources out there that provide useful tips about how to do this step for folks who were not data scientists or data nerds.

I did a quick scan of data visualization resources to look for practical advice on the process of thinking visually and some technical information on what chart to select and data storytelling.  Here’s what I discovered.

(1)   Data Visualization Survival Guide:   This resource (including the 176 slides powerpoint deck) was suggested by Devon Smith.  The deck was part of a workshop facilitated by Gregor Aisch who combines data...

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This map is one of a series of 80 global maps describing the state of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine habitats.  It is the result of a collaborative data and data visualization project undertaken by the Nature Conservancy scientists,  working with governments, scientists and conservation organizations around the world.   They are displayed here using new data visualization tool called Google Fusion Tables technology.  I discovered while browsing through the gallery wondering if any of this technology was within the reach of nonprofits.

Google Fusion Tables was one of several tools mentioned in this blog post, “Data for Good:  A Beginner’s Guide for Nonprofits and Social Ventures.”   And while it is true that the tools are low cost and somewhat easy to use, not every nonprofit has those capacities within the organization.    A few months ago, I wrote a post called “Help, My Nonprofit Needs A Data Nerd and Where To Find Them,”   so ever since...

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This year at the Nonprofit Technology Conference, I had the pleasure of designing and facilitating a session on “Content Curation for Nonprofits”  with Will Coley.  This blog post offers reflections and resources from the session.

I’ve been a content curator for many years, using the techniques to help me develop curriculum materials for workshops and blog posts – as a form of professional development.  Will Coley, comes to the topic understanding how activists and activist organizations are using the techniques as part of their content and engagement strategies. Will is also does a lot of work with video – so when he proposed that we incorporate video interviews as part of the session,  I was thrilled.

The session was designed to balance content delivery with peer interaction.  The value of bringing in pre-recorded interviews with other folks to offer brief insights related to the particular topic made the session more engaging.   While it is...

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Last week, I was lucky enough to be invited to participate in a meeting organized by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation called “Advancing Social Media Measurement for Foundations.”     The participants were a cross-disciplinary group and included people who work at different foundations in the areas of evaluation, communication, social media, and programs as well as people who work for nonprofits and as consultants who work in evaluation, social media, network analysis, data scientists, and others.

The main part of the meeting was two working sessions where we were divided into five small groups to focus defining outcomes, strategies, key performance metrics, and measurement methods for five outcome areas that may be common to many foundation’s communication’s strategies.

• Our foundation is viewed a valuable information source
• Our foundation is viewed as transparent
• Lessons are disseminated, multiplying impact beyond our foundation’s...

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In the sequel movie  Crocodile Dundee 2, there is a great line when Mick Dundee visits the US and two guys try to rob him at knife point.    He pulls out his outback knife, which is three times larger and says,  ”Now, that’s a knife!”     When Alison Carlman, unmarketing manager for Global Giving, shared her social media measurement spreadsheet during a peer learning session I’m facilitating for Packard Foundation grantees based on “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,”  I couldn’t  help but think, “Now That’s A Spreadsheet!”

Why is this such an awesome digital marketing/social media measurement spreadsheet?   The spreadsheet captures strategy, outcomes, tactics, and Key Performance Indicators or metrics.   This isn’t a bunch of metrics trivia disconnected from decision-making.     Global Giving uses a number of sophisticated metrics tools to collect metrics across channels, but that data is cleaned,...

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Click to See Larger Image and Full Data by Marc Smith

How do you measure your network to learn how to improve outcomes?   That was one of many questions raised at during a Twitter Chat last week around the #sm_re hashtag.     The chat was a prelude to a convening on April 25th at the Robert Wood Johnston Foundation of  40 thinkers and practitioners, bringing diverse perspectives and expertise into discussions to develop measures for evaluating the impact of social media on philanthropic outcomes.   I’ll be participating in the session, as part of the context setting by giving an overview of themes in my book, “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” co-author with measurement guru KD Paine.

The chat, moderated by Kami Huyse, and included RWJF staff Debra Joy Perez (@djoyperez), assistant vice president, Research and Evaluation, and  Tina Kauh(@tinakauh), program officer, Research and Evaluation, covered some stimulating questions.   Here’s a curated...

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

— Case Foundation (@CaseFoundation) April 13, 2013

You’ve heard the mantra: Learn from failure. But no one likes to screw up and you can’t learn when you’re beating your chest in frustration or pointing fingers at each other. Some smart organizations are helping their people make failure not only productive, but also fun.   That’s the summary of a post I wrote last week for the Harvard Business Review Blog called “Go Ahead Take A Failure Bow.”

Two weeks ago, during the Nonprofit Technology Conference plenary session on placing little bets and learning from failure,  the four panelists issued a challenge.   Let’s do more than just give failure lip service,  let’s put it into practice and share what learned by placing a “Little Bet” or low risk pilot where you can learn something.    Listen to the ...

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I was honored to be invited to cover this year’s Global Philanthropy Forum, a community of donors and social investors committed to international causes.  The annual conference helps inform, enable and enhance the strategic nature of their work.       This year’s conference, “The Future We Make” had four themes – strategic philanthropy, modern day slavery, agriculture and nutrition, and education, learning, and employment.

I went to cover one session,   “Building An Information Infrastructure:  Unlocking Data for Philanthropy.”  with Jacob Harold, Guidestar;  Robert Kirkpatrick, UN Global Pulse;  Mayur Patel, Knight Foundation.   Darin McKeever from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (and Markets For Good)  was the moderator.

What follows are my notes, but if you want to spend more time learning about this topic, I’ve pulled together these additional curated resources:

1)  Curated Tweets
2) Curated Blog Posts and...

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