The Charity Place

NFPtweetup - during and after

I'm delighted to report that the first NFPtweetup, held last night (4.30-8.30pm, GMT), seemed to be enjoyed by those that took part, and provided a useful forum to bring people together and start exploring all things Twitter for nonprofits.

To think that it started out as a casual, off-the-cuff, remark in a conversation between two not-for-profit tweeters...

... but evolved to be so much more - just like so many things do, wherever social media enables like-minded people to come together.  You can see most of this by looking through tweets mentioning NFPtweetup here and checking out the wiki here.

In all, 35-40 tweeters participated - either in person and/ or online - to share ideas, insights and thoughts, and discuss some of the issues and opportunities for charities and nonprofits using, or thinking of using, Twitter.

(I should say that, although Twitter was the focus of the event, one of the main objectives that emerged as the idea for the event evolved was to engage around the topic of social media in general, using Twitter as an entry point for the conversation - since many of the challenges, considerations and opportunities are the same across the many social platforms.)

To get as much value from this gathering of minds, and allow it to be shared as widely as possible, I put a shout out to everyone before the event to submit one slide capturing an idea, a thought, an observation, a question or an example related to nonprofits' use of Twitter.  This was the result:

NFPtweetup Collaborative Slideshow

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: collaboration socialmedia)

Brilliantly, this collaborative effort was even featured as Top Presentation of the Day on Slideshare which took it to an even wider audience than that for the event itself.

As you might expect of a gathering of nonprofit geeks, there was also plenty of content generated during the event that we've shared across the web.  Here are some links for those interested:

You can access much of the content via this search of hashtags.org.

Tweets including NFPtweetup can all be seen here, too (this would usually be the case at hashtags.org, but the service was down for development when the tweets for NFPtweetup started, and the team at hashtags.org say they are not intending to backdate to aggregate what they missed during this time, because it would take them too long!).

Blog posts (known at time of writing):

• Post by Damien Austin-Walker, from Timebank

• Post by Amy Sample Ward, from NetSquared

• Post by Howard Lake, at UK Fundraising
  (Howard says this was the UK's first NFPtweetup. I think that's true...)

• Post by Ed Walker, from UCLAN

Photos:

• Photos on Twitter tagged NFPtweetup.

Videos and more are being listed here on the wiki as they are created and shared.

With content still being posted, and conversations - having been started on Twitter - moving to other social sites, including The Charity Place, I hope that this event has acted as a catalyst to open up the area of social media a bit more, make it more accessible and unleash its potential for charities and nonprofits.

Thanks again to Just Giving for supporting this event, and to everyone that attended, contributed and participated.

So, should we have another one in a couple of months? Perhaps to explore the burning issues that came up this time that we only had chance to scratch the surface of? Any feedback greatly appreciated...

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?