Category Archives: Community Relations/Outreach

Before you create that online profile… do you want to keep it?

Each time you create a profile on any service — Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Twitter, whatever – you have to use an email address for that profile.

Choose that email address carefully, because it could determine whether or not you get to keep that profile once you leave your organization or agency.

More and more, staff members across organizations – not just the marketing department – are creating online profiles and participating in online groups and social media as a part of their work. An organization’s IT staff might be participating on the TechSoup Community to talk about their approaches to choosing hardware or tools to ensure system security. An agency’s human resources staff may be on an online community for other HR managers, to discuss the latest legislation and court rulings affecting the workplace. An agency’s program director may be on Facebook and Twitter to interact with people participating the agency’s services, classes, whatever.

When that staff member leaves the organization or agency, the tech waters can get quite muddy over who owns those online profiles. Often, it’s not the content of the profile that determines who owns such – it’s what email address was used to register that profile.

If there is any chance you will want to keep any online profile after you leave an organization, don’t register that profile using your organization’s email address.

In an article by Society for Human Resource Management, entitled, Ownership of Social Media Accounts Should Be Clarified in Agreements, Jim Thomas, an attorney with Minor & Brown in Denver (whose No Funny Lawyers Blog has been listed as one of the top 25 U.S. business law blogs according to LexisNexis) offers advice regarding company ownership of employee online activities. He notes in that article:

The clearest case for employer ownership will be an employee who uses other employees to maintain his or her accounts,” Thomas stated. “Beyond that, indicators will be use of employer e-mail addresses, employer standardized or coordinated formats (this is what your page should look like) or approaches to social media (coordinated campaigns); employer-provided photos and/or content; employer-provided passwords or passwords that are shared with the employer; employees who are allowed to use employer computers to use social media during working hours. Not that any one of these or even all of them will be dispositive.

The best advice is to have frank conversations with your supervisor, and to get clear policies from senior management, regarding who owns employee social media activities, and how accounts will be handled if you depart the organization. And you will have to have more such conversations and agreements every time your supervisor or senior staff changes, if policies aren’t in writing.

Careful what you claim: the passions around identity

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Racial and ethnic identity is complicated – and more powerful than you might think. Go to Spain and mistakenly call someone from the Basque region Spanish. Go to Wales or Scotland and mistakenly call someone English. Go to Afghanistan and make a statement that assumes everyone in the country is Pashtun. You will get a VERY passionate response that will show you just how powerful racial and ethnic identity can be.

I never really thought racial identify mattered to me, personally, until I realized what Caucasian meant – the term Caucasian race was created by a German philosopher, Christoph Meiners, in the late 1700s – he defined two racial divisions: Caucasians (“white and beautiful”) and Mongolians (“brown and ugly”).

And if that wasn’t enough to turn me off the term, then living in Europe was: no one there calls Europeans Caucasians. Not unless you are from the Caucasus Mountains.

So now, if I’m filling out the form, and instead of white or of European descent, the form says Caucasian, I choose other. ‘Cause I ain’t from the Caucasus Mountains. And no race is more beautiful than another.

I’ve wondered if, someday, choosing other in such situations is going to make someone think I’m trying to claim some ethnic minority status. I would never do that. In fact, if I ever raise the funds to do one of those DNA ethnic heritage tests, and anything other European shows up, I won’t claim it on any form – how could I claim a heritage when I was never raised in such, when it’s something I’ve no real knowledge of? THAT would be disingenuous, IMO.

In 1993, I worked with American Indians living in the San Francisco Bay area and Arizona, helping them to identify and develop projects they believed would help them economically. It was my first exposure to community development. A couple of people became lifelong friends. And one of the MANY things they taught me was this:

Never, ever claim American Indian heritage just because your family has always said a grandmother or great-grandmother or whatever was Cherokee.

If I heard this warning / complaint once, I heard it a dozen times.

(the groups I worked with also loathed the term Native American, hence my use of the term American Indian – always ask which is preferred)

I’ve never forgotten that lesson (and several others). And as a result, I’ve cautioned some friends who have made the I’m part Cherokee claim – don’t share it outside the family unless you can back it up, because eventually, you are going to get called on it.

All this has come to mind as I’ve watched Elizabeth Warren struggle over explaining the Cherokee heritage that her family claims. She believed the family stories were true, and she was proud of those stories. But she didn’t realize how common those claims are, and how, more often than not, they aren’t true – nor how much those false claims insult tribal members in the USA.

Family history is something most of us never question, that we accept whole-heartedly: why wouldn’t we believe the long-told story that a great-great-grandmother was born on a ship coming from Europe to the USA in the 1800s, or that a great-great-grandfather escaped slavery with the help of Harriet Tubman? It never dawns on you to ask for some kind of documentation, to engage in activities to prove whatever the claims are. And it never dawns on you that casually claiming something in your family heritage could eventually turn out not to be true and could cause you a very significant problem, even some controversy.

I hope this becomes a teachable moment: as much fun as family stories are, it’s a good idea to do some digging and get at least a bit of documentation before you share them outside your family. And unless you have some kind of proof that great-grandma was Cherokee, keep that legend to yourself.

And if you want to know if you really do have any family connection to an American Indian tribe, get busy tracing and documenting your lineage: get accurate names and birth places of grandparents and great-grandparents, and on and on, as far back as you can. Use ancestry.com for accurate birth/death records. Names and birth places on reservations will be clues to American Indian ancestry. Census records may also note your ancestors’ ethnicity. You may be able to find a family member that is listed on the census as a member of a tribe – and that means you will be able to get the name of tribe, the enrollment number, and the census number to prove your lineage. You have to get a state certified birth and death certificates of your enrolled ancestor for an official Certificate of Degree of Indian or Alaskan Native Blood from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

mama jane.

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I get a lot of emails from people who are not native English speakers, or have not had a lot of education in terms of written English.

That means I can’t immediately delete emails that are full of misspellings, ARE WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS, or that don’t make for easy reading – all of the criteria that most people use to screen out scammers and spammers. Instead, I have to read such emails carefully and make sure they aren’t really from a small NGO in a remote country. And even after reading such emails, I’m not always certain.

Here’s an example of the kind of emails I get:

hello
mama jane,
my name is youssuph 18,living in somaliland aka northern somalia .
iam highly interesred in your work n want to be like u in the future,but for now i want u to be our organisation advicer which we have accomoplish the legality of our organisation-we are waiting approval from the ministry
i ,could like to share your 2 decade experience ,
i LOVE your work mama jane.
it is sooooooooooo wonderful
i also could say WELCOME to somaliland .
mwaa jane craven

I’m guessing this person is at least somewhat for real – he got my name mostly right. I have no idea what he really wants – which is often the case when I get these kinds of emails.

But I write back, and see if I can’t direct the person to a local organization or online resource that could help them. And very often, it turns out that it’s a real person, writing from a real NGO.

I always appreciate it when the person doesn’t call me “Sir”. I much prefer mama jane.

And the world keeps getting smaller…

My Twitter Lists

Nonprofits & NGOs: Get to Know a University

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Nonprofits and non-governmental organizations (NGOs):

Do you know what community colleges, public universities and private universities are nearest your agency, geographically? And do any of the degrees or classes they offer relate to the mission of your organization in any way?

For instance,

If your organization provides counseling, have you investigated to see if the nearest college or university has a graduate degree program in psychology?
If your organization assists victims of domestic violence, have you investigated to see if the nearest college or university has a degree program in social work?
If you are focused on the environment in any way, have you investigated if the college or university offers any environment resource management-related courses?
If you work with people trying to start micro-enterprises, have you investigated to see if the college or university nearest you offers business management classes, or even an MBA?

Here’s why your organization needs to be able to answer these questions:

Your nonprofit or NGO has the real-world environment that college and university faculty and graduate students need for academic research and practical experience.
Higher ed institutions have the skills and knowledge your organization may need as well as probono consultants or researchers or on-loan staff.
Faculty at colleges and universities get contacted by the media, and if the story is going to be something related to your organization’s mission, they will refer those reporters to you as well.
Faculty may hear of funding opportunities that might be appropriate for your organization.
Faculty may find themselves in a conversation with public officials or business leaders where they could recommend your organization’s work.

How can nonprofits and NGOs network with university faculty and get on their radar for potential partnerships?

Look at course offerings of college and universities, and identify the faculty teaching courses that relate to your organization’s work. Build a database of people you want to contact; phone numbers and email addresses for most of these folks will be easy to find online, either on the college or university’s web site or through a Google or Bing search.
Look to see if faculty with which you want to connect has a Twitter feed and, if so, and it’s regarding their work, follow such. Same for a Facebook profile or a GooglePlus profile. Get to know more about their work through their updates. If the person posts something that relates to your work, reply to a post.
Read something by that faculty member in an academic journal (you can get access to this through your local library) or other publication.
Add appropriate faculty to your press release distribution list.
Invite the faculty you have identified to your open houses and public events. Send a personalized invitation, noting exactly why you are inviting this person to such.
Invite the faculty you have identified to a meeting at your organization set up just for that person, or even to lunch. Let them know about your organization’s in-house expertise. If you already have partnership ideas, propose them. If you don’t, talk about what the faculty member’s courses and research have in common with your organization, and say that you would love to collaborate in some way but you aren’t entirely sure how.

It’s an ongoing cultivation process. You are building relationships, and that won’t come from just an email, a phone call or meeting face-to-face once. Colleges and universities are a HUGE resource right in your backyard – not just as one-day student volunteers, but as potential program and funding partners. Don’t wait for them to find you – seek THEM out!

Look what partnerships with universities can lead to:

Western Kentucky University Entrepreneurship students working to revitalize downtown businesses

Why Your Organization Probably Doesn’t Need A Facebook Page

learning from a campaign that went viral

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Sweeping the Internet this week: a viral video campaign by Invisible Children to make Joseph Kony, a terrorist leader in Uganda, a household name, and thereby get the media and politicans to pay attention. Viewership is through the roof, #KONY2012 is trending on Twitter, and the press is all over it. Even Lord Voldemort is on board:

The video is here; jump to 10:30 on the video if you want to get to the heart of the video, and watch until 27:00, to get a sense of what the campaign is trying to achieve and how it will do so, without having to watch the whole thing – it’s 16 or so minutes of your life worth spending, both to learn about an important human rights campaign and to see how to make a campaign go viral.

This is already a wildly successful activism / digital story-telling campaign – but it’s not a campaign that can be easily replicated by *most* nonprofits.

Here’s why it is working:

it’s an easy-to-understand cause
it’s a cause that gets an immediate emotional-response by anyone who watches the video
it’s a slickly produced video – very well edited, compelling imagery, excellent script
it offers both simple and ambitious ways to get involved: at the very least, you can like the Invisible Children Facebook page, share the video with your online social network, and help get the word out further. At the other end of the spectrum, you can organize an event on April 20, per Invisible Children’s guidelines for such, garnering press coverage and participation on a local level for an international issue.
it builds up to a specific day – April 20
it has a wide range of items for sale for activists to wear and display on April 20, which will help publicize the event and help make participants easy to identify the day of the event, and the sale of those items helps fund the campaign
there are Invisible Children staff engaging with people on Twitter and Facebook for hours at a time – not just tweeting one link to a press release and hoping it catches on
it has an easy-to-remember Twitter tag that isn’t in use by anyone else: #KONY2012

It’s having that specific day of action and a video that creates in-depth awareness about a specific issue that, IMO, makes this go well beyond slacktivism/slackervism.

What did it take for this campaign to be successful:

money. Yes, I’m sure a lot of things were donated and a lot of expertise was give pro bono, but it still took money to pay for people and their time and knowledge to make this happen.
wide-ranging, deep relationships with key people (media, corporations, celebrities, politicians, communications strategists). These relationships took many months, even years, to cultivate – more than some tweets and email.
a very detailed, well-thought-out strategic plan. Somewhere, this plan is in writing, no matter how spontaneous the feeling this campaign is conveying.
a LOT of people to undertake the necessary outreach activities via traditional and online media. This isn’t just sending press releases; this is also engaging with people on Twitter and the phone for hours at a time. It took people to design the web site, to design the materials, to distribute those materials, to talk to the press – and it took those people MANY hours of work to do so, and it’s taking even more time to respond to all of the press and critics now focusing on the effort.

But while there is a lot to learn from this campaign for nonprofits and NGOs, this is not the campaign most should aspire to.

Most nonprofits and NGOs do NOT have the resources to make something like this happen – and never will.
Your nonprofit is probably engaged in something that’s only local, or that is a more complex issue to explain, and that doesn’t garner an immediate emotional response.
Your nonprofit might not be able to survive the incredible attention and scrutiny that a campaign like this would bring.

That doesn’t mean your nonprofit is less worthwhile than Invisible Children – it just means that having a video go viral nationally or internationally might not-at-all be what is best for YOUR nonprofit.

As you read about this campaign and see it get so much attention, think about what you really want from donors, volunteers, the press, politicians, clients and the general public regarding your organization.

Think about local celebrities, local policy makers, local leaders (both official ones, like elected officials, and unofficial ones, like prominent business people or local leaders of religious communities) and local activists – what do you want them to say about your organization, and how might you get them to?

Also see this TechSoup resource on Digital Storytelling.

Another lesson to learn from this campaign: don’t spam celebrities. I’ve seen a lot of celebrity Twitter feeds over-run with tweets from people begging for that person to follow or mention this or that nonprofit or cause. George Clooney probably gets 100 of those tweets in just one day! Don’t make George Clooney dislike your organization because you keep tweeting him, begging for a mention.

One of the things that has been amusing to see is the stampede of smug aid workers and other smugsters to condemn the campaign – the theme of the pushback falls into four categories:

this issue is complex and therefore this campaign is inappropriate, or
this campaign is somehow neo-colonial or
I don’t like this nonprofit organization and you shouldn’t either
this campaign takes money and awareness away from local issues

Here’s why a lot of these criticisms are bogus:

Americans are some of the most globally-unaware people on the planet. I moved back to the USA in 2009 and have heard things every day by neighbors, people I volunteer with and people on TV that have reminded me of this every day. And this ignorance about the world leads to some profoundly ridiculous statements and actions by my fellow Americans. Maybe this campaign will help make a few people, particularly young people, aware of the world beyond the borders of the USA. BandAid/LiveAid did that for me once-upon-a-time – don’t laugh, but it did. I was a teenager in Kentucky as ignorant as a box of hammers. That record and that concert set me on a path for a lifetime.

Also, in the USA, no human rights movement has ever succeeded without a lot of outside pressure and support – and anyone who thinks apartheid was removed as an official policy in South Africa only because of pressure and evolution from within South Africa isn’t paying attention.

Some of the arguments I’ve heard about why the USA should not be focused on Uganda are the same arguments I’ve heard from China and Russia about why the world needs to not “interfere” with Syria.

Compassion for one thing breeds compassion for other things. No one – NO ONE – is saying, “Don’t be focused on local issues – instead, care about what’s happening in Uganda!” As this campaign ends, the people that have gotten caught up in it, particularly young people, are going to have a taste for advocacy and wanting to make a difference. If your local nonprofit is jealous, then start thinking now about how you are going to leverage what’s happening. Is there going to be an anti-Kony event at your local schools or in your local community? Then start designing the handbills you are going to give out at anti-Kony-related events to tell those energized young people about your local cause and how and why they can get involved.

By all means, offer legitimate criticisms of this campaign and Invisible Children. But some people are trying to kill this campaign – and I question their motivations in doing so.

Also see:

Use Your Web Site to Show Your Accountability and To Teach Others About the Nonprofit / NGO / Charity Sector

How to Make a Difference Internationally/Globally/in Another Country Without Going Abroad

Ideas for Leadership Volunteering Activities to make a difference locally

Advice for volunteering abroad (volunteering internationally)

Excuses, excuses

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Here’s a conversation I had this week as a member of a certain city’s citizen’s committee regarding bicyclists and pedestrians:

Me: “I’d like for this link to the state agency name redacted web site to added to this web page on the city’s site. I’ve sent two emails requesting it, but no one has responded.”

City representative: “We don’t have money in the budget to do that.”

Me: “You don’t have the money to add a link to a web page?!?”

City Rep: “Actually, it’s because the decision makers need to review that change first.”

Me: “Okay, who are the ‘decision makers’?”

City Rep: “Oh, we don’t have a policy yet on how those decisions will be made.”

THIS IS WHY I DON’T BELIEVE IN CONSPIRACY THEORIES INVOLVING THE GOVERNMENT.

This is also a perfect illustration of the change of mentality that’s needed for effective online communications. Using web pages and social media has nothing to do with budgets or policies – it has to do with mindsets.

Fear-based management – it’s a customer service KILLER.

Can potential volunteers find you?

No more warm, fuzzy language to talk about volunteers!

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Volunteers are neither saints nor teddy bears.

But you would never know it from the kinds of language so many people use to talk about them.

Back in November 2009, I got a mass email sent out from United Nations Volunteers to several thousand people that illustrates this oh-so-well. It said, in part:

This is the time to recognize the hard work and achievements of volunteers everywhere who work selflessly for the greater good.

Selflessly?

And then there are those companies that sell items for organizations to give to their volunteers, with phrases like:

Volunteers spread sunshine!

Volunteers… hearts in bloom!

In a word – yuck.

Not all volunteers are selfless! Yes, I fully acknowledge that there are still some volunteers that like to be thanked with pink balloons and fuzzy words – but could we at least acknowledge that there are many thousands of volunteers who do not respond to this way of being recognized?

Volunteers are not all donating unpaid service to be nice, or to make a difference for a greater good of all humanity or to be angels. Volunteers also donate unpaid service:

to gain certain kinds of experience
for a sense of adventure
to gain skills and contacts for paid employment
for fun
to meet people in the hopes of making friends or even get dates
because they are angry and want to see first hand what’s going on at an organization or within a cause, or to contribute to a cause they feel passionate about
to feel important
to change people’s perceptions about a group (a religious minority in a community may volunteer to demonstrate to the majority that they are a part of the community too, that they care about other people, etc.)

NONE of those reasons to volunteer are selfless. But all of them are excellent reasons to volunteer, nonetheless – and excellent reasons for an organization to involve a volunteer.

These not-so-selfless volunteers are not less committed, less trustworthy or less worth celebrating than the supposed selfless volunteers.

Let’s quit talking about volunteers with words like nice and selfless. Let’s drop the fuzzy language and start using more modern and appropriate language to talk about volunteers that recognizes their importance, like

powerful
intrepid
audacious
determined
qualified
innovative
revolutionary
fastidious

Let’s even call them mettlesome and confrontational and demanding. That’s what makes volunteers necessary, not just nice.

In short, let’s give volunteers their due with the words we use to describe them.

And don’t even try to say volunteers save money, because that starts yet another blog rant…

The Value of Volunteers (and how to talk about such)
Volunteers – still not free! Even at Wikipedia!
Required Volunteer Information on Your Web Site

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Jayne Cravens / CoyoteBroad Blog

Commentary, resources & discussion re: nonprofits/ngos, communications, community engagement, volunteerism, effective humanitarian aid & development, ethics, women's empowerment & management ethics. Posts at least twice a month, usually on Tuesdays.

Category Archives: Community Relations/Outreach

mama jane.

Nonprofits & NGOs: Get to Know a University

learning from a campaign that went viral

Can potential volunteers find you?

No more warm, fuzzy language to talk about volunteers!