Over the years, the way the community comes together has changed:  There was a time when the community would meet in the church basement Sunday morning, at school during soccer practice, or at Bernice’s house for coffee and cake. Or donate as the result of a mailing, a dinner, a bake sale, a telephone tree, …

Now it’s harder because people are busy.  They are overcommitted, and it’s getting tricky to balance the daily routine of work, commuting, family, waiting in line at Starbucks, reading and updating Facebook, Twitter, must see TV, gym or just making excuses not to go to the gym…

Securing donations of time or money to the favored CBO has become a game of finding the sliver of time when you can grab donors’ attention and their hearts.

And now that people don’t pick up the phone when they don’t recognize the number, or read or respond to emails their lives don’t depend on, it’s becoming tougher to reach them and tougher still to find the appropriate time they are willing to pay attention.

Whatever the right answer, one is clear — the community is dictating when and where they want to hear what you have to say.  So be ready to catch them when you can.

And while you are not ready to give up newsletters, direct mails, phone calls and emails, (just in case the ROI is still positive), target the distracted donor, volunteer, leader, because other causes have him in sight.

The two rules are: make it easy and be relevant.  Make it easy for your community to learn about you by allowing them to like or follow you and make it easy to contribute to your cause, whether with an obvious green donation button,  a link with ALL the appropriate information: time, place, how to get there, who to RSVP, what type of books to drop off, which time slots they can serve, which tools to bring, …  donations are NOT the only thing the community can contribute.  And be relevant.  A National Blood Drive is nice to know, but if I live in Boston tell me where and when I should be able to donate.

Many national organizations have great websites, newsletters and other communications but fail to recognize the needs of local participants.

• Who Cares? How to Create Helpful Social Media Content For Your ..
• Forget Social Media and Simply Create Content
• The Value of Creating a Customer-Centric Social Media Strategy …
• Social Media Marketing and Blogging
• Create a Social Networking Site
• HOW TO: create effective content for social media | b2bmarketing.net
• 7 Content Writing Tips For Your Social Media Strategy
• How To Create Emotionally Invigorating Social Media Content …
• Content the Foundation of your Social Media Marketing – Tips and Ta…

By comparison, there were only 6.4 million results for “how to deal with writers block,” a condition first described in 1947, way before the internet was conceived. But with 0.8 billion Facebook users, it’s not surprising that some would search for ideas and suggestions on how to go about it.

Community Managers for organizations wear many hats and appreciate the different dimensions of this problem:

• promoting the brand,
• addressing customer service issues,
• tracking reputation indicators,
• analyzing the competition, …

In addition, they are also asked to mentor/tutor affiliates who want to participate.  They are not mini-me replicas of national but generally use social media to engage directly with their constituencies. They have a narrower focus, something the National Community Manager can not do from their vantage.  While a national message might be “May is national fund drive,” affiliates would be more specific with “volunteers for our May campaign should contact Joe at 555.1212.”

National Community Managers should expect the mentoring portion of their growing responsibility to grow as more affiliates participate in social media, and again as affiliates ask for ideas and suggestions for local content.

The role of Community Manager continues to evolve.

I live on the Upper West Side and sometime play tennis at Riverside Park Tennis Courts and would welcome a News Feed (Facebook) on changes in operating hours, court conditions, availability and special events for that specific location. The City of New York Department of Recreation has a great website about its 800 parks.  That’s too much information; I’m only interested in my local park.

We understand that each agency or department has a group responsible for and may also include a social media contributor, and that’s a start.  Beth Kanter, describes the social media learning curve as crawl, walk, run, fly; a good visual of evolution and of acquiring any skill.

We can anticipate how each department will fulfill this requirement:  find staff (hire or designate an employee), train, develop strategy, identify ROI’s and ultimately launch the program.  Difficult and expensive.  Difficult because finding the right talent with the temperament to straddle the wild west of social media and the complex bureaucracy of governmental agencies is hard. Expensive because it pulls away participants from their disparate departments.  In addition there are costs associated with paying for a trainer, transportation and a location.

Making sure that each department provides information on new programs, hours, events, … creates an infrastructure with its own momentum.  For example, the Parks Department has set up a reporting mechanism to gather information from all the different venues.  Policies or directives will be established to make sure this happens on an ongoing basis and supervisors will be designated to follow through.

Once an infrastructure is defined and set, it’s difficult to displace.  The ROI that tallies the number of friends, likes and followers will be watched carefully, and validate the performance of some departments (interest in Department of Transportation will probably be high, Environmental Protection not as much). What happens when the ROI stabilizes or shrinks as followers prune their inbox and likes?  One will expect participants to go back to the infrastructure and tap them for more and more information.  And that’s when trouble begins.  Because followers are constantly on the lookout for what is more relevant and contextual.

We think of Social Media as a tree where each leaf is one member of our community.  One approach is to create a tree trunk to feed each leaf (the Parks Department website).  The other is to feed the branches that feed the leaves, reaching only the ones you need to reach.

Radian6 just published ROI of Social Media: Myths, Truths and How to Measure by Dr. Natalie L Petouhoff. Well written and compact (only 16 pages) it moves very quickly from what to measure to how to measure. I will address what to measure because that’s particularly hard to address with nonprofits.
Just as marketing at for-profits looks at increased sales, CFO’s at nonprofits look for increased donations. But with the increased participation of marketing, communications, public relations, development and programming in SM, the goals and objectives have grown and diversified. Chapter 4 lists eight SM business goals:

1. “Determine what customers and prospects are saying about your company via social media monitoring
2. Gather competitive intelligence
3. Engage with customers and prospects online
4. Build thought leadership through sharing relevant content
5. Maximize reach of content and messaging in social channels
6. Support existing sales and marketing campaigns
7. Support recruiting and retention efforts
8. Build customer community to provide support and advocacy”

Depending on the organization and its mission, different constituencies have different interests, they include:

• Advisory Committee(s)
• Board Members
• Chairman of the Board
• Customers
• Development
• Donors
• Executive Director
• Members
• Programming
• Prospects
• Staff in general
• Volunteers

And because nonprofit organizations are, to use de Toqueville’s description, voluntary associations, participants may change their role but retain their interest. So for every constituency there are several more, such as: prospective ____, high level ____, past _____, etc.

Ultimately everything matters to everybody. In my view, the most important goal is to “build … community to provide support and advocacy,” or to start the online conversation. And one essential step is to track the number of participants who are in a position to contribute. Having thousands of friends or followers can make a SM manager believe they are getting the word out, but if most are thousand of miles away, they are not adding value. One hundred contributors within the community can be more effective because they are in a better position to share ideas, suggestions, donations, time, referrals, and contacts.

Be prepared with goals and stats before the CFO comes knocking. It will allow you the opportunity to define the goals of SM, as opposed to having them defined for you.

The term ”crowdsourcing” was coined 5 years ago by Jeff Howe in a Wired magazine article “The Rise of Crowdsourcing.”  Wikipedia, a remarkable example of how powerful crowdsourcing can be, describes the term as “the act of sourcing tasks traditionally performed by specific individuals to a group of people or community (crowd) through an open call.”  Howe also authored THE book on the topic.

Now we learn that big firms are adopting the ideas behind crowdsourcing. The WSJ article describes how AOL evaluated executing a project by (1) developing software, (2) hiring temps and finally (3) crowdsourcing the effort. Crowdsourcing is generally “cheaper and faster” than hiring temps.

Nonprofits are poised to take advantage of volunteers  and donors eager to contribute to their cause.  Exemplars include the Red Cross and many religious organizations that perform an outstanding job of leveraging their volunteers.

When it comes to Social Media, nonprofits have been more timid because it requires both coordination (between and within their hundreds of affiliates) and management (including training, development, supervision, …)  It also requires “breaking the project down into tiny component tasks and farming those tasks out to the general public” and that requires strategy, planning and (above all) management support.

Volunteer
Working as a volunteer for nonprofit groups supports the cause, permits you to stretch in a new direction, and can yield benefits for business development.

A brief foray into local politics for the Roosevelt Island Residents Association led to media coverage and, in turn, a referral to Denise Shull, a Behavioral Finance specialist. Denise counsels hedge fund managers and traders and has a book in press. Now, she’s a client.

On the contact side, by serving on the Communications Committee for 100 Women in Hedge Funds I met hedge fund reporter Erin Arvedlund .

It was only natural that I introduced them and — you guessed it — their lively conversation led to a personal finance article in The Philadelphia Inquirer on Denise and the new book.

Where will you volunteer? You’re acquainted with neighborhood associations, the congregation where you worship, local historical societies, community arts groups, plus the area chapter of national cause-driven organizations.

You can also comb online databases to find opportunities that match your professional skills and interests. If your busy schedule keeps you tied to your desk, consider serving the greater good from your home computer, at night, in your pajamas. No meetings required.
Resources
These websites led me to local, national and international nonprofits:
www.VolunteerMatch.org
www.NYCService.org
www.CatchaFire.org
www.Idealist.org

You can also get started by joining the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service on Monday, January 16. Schools, the financial markets and government offices are closed. You can shop the sales after you do your part.

Volunteer: Do Good, Make Contacts, Get Clients in 2012.
Janet

www.janetlfalk.com
janet@janetlfalk.com
212.677.5770

A quick recap follows:

11 New Year’s Resolutions for Nonprofit Social Media Managers

JANUARY 3, 2012

1. Create a “Thank You” video(s) for your 2012 fundraising campaigns … to stand out from all the noise.

2. Learn basic HTML … to add social networking icons, a Donate Now button, or an e-newsletter subscribe link to your blog, default landing page on Facebook, or to Flickr … href=”http://www.diosacommunications.com/htmltipsheet.htm

3. Diversify your news sources.

4. View your nonprofit’s website on a tablet and smartphone browser ASAP!

5. Subscribe to receive text alerts from the early adopters in the nonprofit sector… in the United States … to receive text alerts from Nonprofit Tech 2.0, … text NONPROFITORGS to 27138.

6. Send handwritten notes to donors and supporters…. Buy some nice stationary (preferably on recycled paper) and send handwritten thank you notes to donors, volunteers, and even your most committed online activists.

7. Pay attention to Internet TV trend and consider launching your own TV station.

8. Wrap your head around the Cloud… a server/service where you can store your hard drive/database/documents/apps/software making it accessible any where at any time thus giving it mobility.

9. Closely monitor the possibility of mobile wallets being used for fundraising.

10. Make new friends (Google+) and keep the old (Myspace)… We might just discover that sometimes social networking communities simply go dormant and can brought back to life. I got my start on Myspace, so personally I would love to see the community revitalized.

11. Donate at least $10 monthly to your favorite (but different) nonprofits … and study the donation process.

The column identifies 7 actions to tackle your to-do list:

1. “Limit list to concrete tasks
2. Assign a priority to each task
3. Plan time in schedule for each task
4. Group tasks by where they’ll be performed
5. List only as many items as can be realistically accomplished (in a day, week, etc.)
6. Cross off or delete completed tasks
7. Start a new list”

As Community Manager of your organization, it’s easy to lose track of your day. This is especially true with nonprofits where management tends to jump from one emergency to another. But we know that building and sustaining a community is more than a full time project, and the larger the community, the greater the need and attention they require.

At minimum a Community Manager should focus on the CEO (Connect, Empower, Orchestrate) action steps:

GOAL:  Connect with your audience
TASKS: Target the audience, identify interests, triggers, grow the community

GOAL: Empower your community
TASKS: Identify volunteers, influencers, select tools, encourage participation

GOAL: Orchestrate the conversation
TASKS: Relate organizational mission to conversation, identify topics relevant to community, track contributors, …

For those more ambitious, here are more traditional approaches to identifying your goals and accomplishing your tasks (Wikipedia is a good resource):

Identify your Goals:

• Covey Quadrants: Distinguish between what’s important/not important and urgent/not urgent. Focus on important but not (yet) urgent. Responding to a member suggestion could be important and urgent, posting daily on Facebook may not be.
• SMART goals: Develop goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely.
• 80/20 Rule: Focus on tasks that will give you the biggest bang for the buck — getting one new affiliate online every week can add many new members
• Backwards Planning: When setting up a goal (building up an online community), think about it’s component parts (identify community, discover interests and triggers, …) and which steps will help you build up to your goal.

Accomplish your tasks:

• Monotasking: Don’t try to work on more than one task at a time
• Checklists: Use lists to manage your day/week/ and goals/projects
• Big Rocks: Face up to the big challenges, don’t walk around them
• Eat the Frog: Perform unpleasant tasks first, your day will look brighter as they get done
• Time Boxing: Give yourself a deadline
• Batch Process: handle similar things at the same time — all emails, phone calls, etc
• Handle items only once: complete each task as you take it on

MyCustomer.com summarized key developments in social media (and my comments):
1. “Outsourcing social media is back in fashion” (only when #3, #5 and #6 are resolved)
2. “We’re moving into the age of collaboration” (hard to manage and coordinate)
3. “Many brands still need to learn how to respond to online criticism” (harder still)
4. “Social media monitoring and ‘socialytics’ are growing in prominence”
5. “We can measure social media ROI – if ROI means return on ignorance”
6. “Organisations are starting to consider a more holistic view – the social business” (hardest)

These topics will be addressed at the May 31 Social Business Strategy Summit 2012, “to discuss how firms are transforming internally and externally to support their connected stakeholders through the deployment of social business strategies and technologies”.

Sounds like time well spent.