The Charity Place

Count Malaria Out on World Malaria Day

It's World Malaria Day on 25th April, and I was asked to show support by displaying a button on this blog, linking through to the campaign.  (You'll see it on the right, next to this post.)

Even though I haven't blogged here for some considerable time, I'm happy to oblige if it helps to raise awareness even in a very small way.

Half of the world's population are at risk of malaria and, according to the World Malaria Report, published by the World Health Organisation, there were 243 million cases during 2008, resulting in 863,000 deaths.

According to the charity Malaria No More, more than a million people die of malaria every year.  Most are young children under five years old.  In Africa, the disease currently kills one child every 30 seconds.

But virtually all of these deaths are avoidable.

In countries such as Ethiopia and Rwanda, where mosquito nets, medicine and insecticides have been distributed, deaths from malaria have already been reduced by over 50%.

So, what can you do?

• Pledge your support: 'Count yourself in to Count Malaria Out and join the global community in working to ensure that every man, woman and child in malaria-affected regions has access to essential prevention and treatment services by 2010.'
• Make a donation to a charity that works to save lives from malaria?  Malaria No More, as the name implies, focuses on putting an end to the suffering and death caused by malaria.
• Help to raise awareness by displaying the button on your blog and/ or website, by joining the Facebook page and sharing it on your profile, and following World Malaria Day 2010 on Twitter and retweeting to your followers.

Twitter - why use directories?

I found a new Twitter service the other day called We Follow - which calls itself a 'user powered Twitter directory'.

In a previous post on finding people to follow, I shared a link for Twellow, which is a similar thing.

I like the look of WeFollow, just because it's so simple and uncluttered, but you can only add yourself to three categories, which is a bit frustrating.  A lot of individuals, and a lot of charities, are a lot more multifaceted than that.

I've signed up to We Follow anyway though - because directories are a good place for other people to find you, so can help you attract new followers.  And because people find you via a category search, like 'nonprofit', it's likely you'll share a genuine interest with them, so it's a win win.

If you're a charity and followers find you using a directory, the chances are that they are pretty interested in what you do - exactly the sort of people you want to engage with.

At the moment, Twellow is more searchable, because you can add far more categories to your profile, which creates more ways for people to find you.  Twellow also allows you to link to more of your social profiles, which makes it easy for people to engage with you on the platform of their choice.

 
There are plenty of other ways for your supporters to track down your Twitter profile, including promoting and linking it to your Facebook page, your YouTube channel, your website - all of which will help bump the page rank up in searches.

There's also Twitter Search (which has recently added an advanced search, which helps you drill down further into niches and interests).

I would still say it's worth registering with directories though, just so you are covering as many bases as possible and making it really easy for people to find you and engage with you.

Like Twitter search, they'll help people find you based around their interests, rather than by your brand - and that's very powerful.

Come to think of it, Twellow automatically creates a listing/ profile for you when you start using Twitter, which you have the option to claim and amend or add to.  Have you claimed yours yet?

Serious fun from SXSW - the Social Media Nonprofit Poetry Slam

I've just been catching up with this session - run yesterday at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas - via the Twitterstream and the links to various blogs that people have shared in their tweets.

Conducted entirely in rhyme (yes, really), the session was moderated by Beth Kanter, with contributions from:

• Danielle Brigida - National Wildlife Federation
• Wendy Harman - American Red Cross - National Headquarters
• Carie Lewis - The Humane Society of the United States
• David Neff - American Cancer Society [Judge]
• Katie Paine - KDPaine & Partners [Judge]
• Holly Ross - NTEN [Judge]

Unsurprisingly, Twitter is mentioned heavily - along with a range of other social media - in the examples shared by the panel.

Beth has kindly shared a comprehensive range of content from it here, on her blog - including the slides, transcripts of the poems recited by each of the panelists, along with a variety of links to help you get a fuller picture of the nonprofit case studies, experiences and insights that the session pulled together and shared.

And here's a video (via the NTEN blog) of the panelists in action:

Looks like a lot of fun, whilst making a serious point about how charities - and brands in general - are re-evaluating their traditional views on metrics, measurement and ROI to account for a different style of engagement with supporters through social media. 

It's really quite clever to deliver a session on measurement and metrics in such a unusual and engaging way - reflecting how social media enable nonprofits to engage supporters in helping them meet their challenges in new and innovative ways.

Beth also shares some reflections from the session on her blog here.

Why charities need to use social media

Here's a link to an article I wrote for CharityComms on this subject, to accompany the presentation I made at their event on 22 October.

(For some reason I can't fathom, clicking the link to the article brings up 'Page not found' and you have to refresh or reload the page to bring the article up. If you still have trouble, here's the URL: http://www.charitycomms.org.uk/articles/insider_secrets/why_charities_need_to_use_social_media)

And here are the slides that I used for the presentation:

Social Media for Change - prepared for Charitycomms, 22 Oct 08

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: communications fundraising)

It feels like it might be somewhat lacking without the narrative I gave on the day (one of the side-effects of abandoning boring bullet points in favour of something slightly less tedious is that the Powerpoint doesn't stand up quite so well on its own afterwards).  The article should go some way towards plugging the gap though.

I'd seen several great presentations that focus more on social media as a concept - and talk more hypothetically about how they can be used - and had also spoken to quite a number people who work at charities who had even attended social media presentations and were still a bit bewildered about what they should actually do.

Because of this, I wanted to illustrate, as simply and clearly as possible, using real examples, what some of the platforms do, what some charities are actually using them for, and what they are achieving, with some clear take outs at the end on next steps.

I had some very positive feedback afterwards, and a couple of people even told me they had joined up to Twitter as a result (if you're on Twitter, you can follow them here and here), so I think it worked.

If you're interested, here's a podcast from the event created by those nice people at Sound Delivery (this features interviews with speakers and attendees, as opposed to recordings of the presentations themselves).

As soon as I post this, it should get tweeted automatically via Friendfeed.  How about that for having your presence on several channels covered?  There's a tip in there somewhere.

What non-profits can learn from the Obama campaign

I couldn't let the day end without commenting on the excellent, strategic mobilisation of social media tools as used by the Obama campaign.

Fundraising by politicians and political parties isn't something that would usually inspire or interest me, but what Obama's team achieved is so relevant to charities who may still be wondering whether there's anything in this social media thing, aside from a load of buzzwords - by which I mean, can it be used to generate income, and will they get a worthwhile return on investment for time and money directed towards this still somewhat unproven area?

Well, the Google Alerts I have for 'fundraising' have produced pages of listings for the Obama campaign to the point that it's virtually eclipsed any other fundraising news for the past year, so that was the first heads up. There was story after story about the online activity, in particular, that the campaign was deploying to engage with groups that had not previously voted, or had previously voted Republican, to create what they called a 'national coalition of voters' - a movement, if you will.

The campaign got Chris Hughes, one of the co-founders of Facebook, on board, made a lot of noise using a dedicated Barack Obama channel on YouTube and even utilised the noisy and increasingly less niche platform, Twitter.  All of this helped to ensure that Obama was right at the cutting edge, being seen and heard in all the right places, and was considered relevant by younger voters (who played a huge part in providing the extra votes he needed to win the election).

It transpires that the Obama campaign raised over $600 million to fund the media activity that would create the swell of public opinion he needed to win.  The real suprise here is that this impressive total was achieved, in large part, by the campaign's effectiveness in engaging individuals and cultivating their support to generate millions of small donations (well, small by traditional political fundraising standards, anyway).  According to this article in the New York Times, the average donation was less than $100 - which equates to just over £63.

I read an interesting article from Marketing Direct on Brand Republic, which provides some insights into the approach the campaign took, some of which chime very much with my own views on how charities should use social media to cultivate support - essentially that engagement needs to come first, the ask, and the donation, later.

Specifically, the article refers to the experience of George Nimeh, joint MD of Iris, who registered on an Obama campaign website. Nimeh is quoted as saying, "The first emails I received were about engagement ... The emails asking for cash were the last step in a well thought-out eCRM process." Quite right too.

Marketing Direct points out that there are 'lessons for UK politicians' to be taken from the example of the Obama campaign.  I would say there are also powerful lessons for charities.

Social media are a great leveller, as Barack Obama and his team have proven.  You don't have to be a heavy-weight, establishment brand to get results using them.  Small, nimble charities are already proving that having a presence on social platforms gives them a voice, a credibility and opportunities to generate support that they could only have dreamt of without these tools.  In his victory speech, Obama was honest and humble enough to point out that he didn't start out as the front-runner - quite the contrary - and that he had only been able to achieve what he did with the help of millions of Americans, who supported him through word of mouth and donations.  Who's to say whether he would have been making quite the same rousing speech if it hadn't been for the role that social media had played in his campaign?

Mohammed is free!

Earlier in the month, I logged into Facebook - as I seldom seem to do these days - and was delighted to see this message:

If you read my post back in May, or saw the story elsewhere, you'll know that Mohammed had been missing since the 13th of April, after he was arrested by the Egyptian authorities during a public protest.

It's wonderful news that Mohammed's whereabouts is now known - although it has been reported that he was subject to beatings and electric shocks whilst in detention, so I hope that he is safe from any further repercussions.

I can't help wondering whether James Buck's efforts to publicise Mohammed's plight helped to secure his release?

There is no doubt that, through his clever use of social media, he managed to mobilise a huge amount of support and - most effective of all in this case - make some considerable noise about the issue.

And now, apparently, Twitter has been in discussions with James about developing an emergency network, linked to their service, that could be used by activists and in crisis situations.

When you consider how quickly news about the earthquake in China spread via Twitter earlier in the year, it makes absolute sense to promote the ability it has to spread messages, globally, in 'real time'. Although, as users know only too well, Twitter will have to become a lot more stable to cope with the increased traffic for this to be the really powerful tool it has the potential to be - otherwise, another of the up and coming social media channels will simply pick it up and run with it.

Connecting your supporters directly with your work has never been easier

Yesterday, I posted about how charities need to make the most direct connections possible between their supporters and the work they do.

There just really isn’t any good excuse not to be doing this anymore because there are so many accessible, inexpensive tools at our disposal now.

For a lesson in using social media to do connect people and causes, you couldn’t get a much better example than Mara Triangle, who have integrated content on Facebook, Flickr, and Vimeo, and are microblogging updates reguarly using Twitter.

It’s just about as close as you can get to the Masai Mara, looking at the wildlife yourself, without actually being there in person (although, when you watch some of the video, you sometimes almost forget you’re still just sitting in front of your PC).

Male Lions Fighting from Joseph Kimojino on Vimeo.

News, photos and footage appear in real time, and the team there engage one-to-one on a daily basis with donors and potential donors all over the world in a way I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.

I’m totally hooked.

If you’ve spent five or ten minutes looking at what they do, and the amazing wildlife they’re so bravely protecting – against all the odds – I reckon there’s a good chance you’ll have already signed up to a regular gift.  If you haven’t, take a look at their urgent appeal here and consider giving something.

And, before you go, just think – if Mara Triangle can do this with the scant resources they have, what excuse is there really for your organisation not to be doing something similar?