Category Archives: Community Relations/Outreach

PowerPoint / slide shows: the antithesis of thinking

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I hate Microsoft PowerPoint users. I hate all slide show users, actually.

Hate. I’m a hater.

I hate slide show presentations because:

  • people stare at the presentation rather than listening to and hearing what’s being said
  • people stare at the slide show rather than looking at the presenter 
  • people think reading the slide show later, having missed the actual meeting, will provide them with all the information needed
  • the presenter often stares at the presentation instead of the audience

I’m not the only hater…  a Swiss political party wants to outlaw the software. I’m sure it’s a joke, but it is true when the organizers say that slideshow software (and unnecessary meetings and presentations in general) are boring employees and costing companies billions in lost work.

But the problem is much worse than boredom: T.X. Hammes’ blog Dumb-dumb bullets: As a decision-making aid, PowerPoint is a poor tool really struck a chord a few years ago, and it’s worth it to revisit. Hammes uses PowerPoint to mean any slide show, even though there is a range of software that people use to create boring slide show presentations:

(PowerPoint) is actively hostile to thoughtful decision-making. It has fundamentally changed our culture by altering the expectations of who makes decisions, what decisions they make and how they make them.

He continues

Before PowerPoint, staffs prepared succinct two- or three-page summaries of key issues. The decision-maker would read a paper, have time to think it over and then convene a meeting with either the full staff or just the experts involved to discuss the key points of the paper. Of course, the staff involved in the discussion would also have read the paper and had time to prepare to discuss the issues. In contrast, today, a decision-maker sits through a 20-minute PowerPoint presentation followed by five minutes of discussion and then is expected to make a decision. Compounding the problem, often his staff will have received only a five-minute briefing from the action officer on the way to the presentation and thus will not be well-prepared to discuss the issues. This entire process clearly has a toxic effect on staff work and decision-making.

If I didn’t know that Hammes retired from the Marine Corps after 30 years, I would swear, based on the above, that he, too, worked at the United Nations. Please read the entire blog. He’s so right on.

I do slide shows for my presentations because they are expected by whomever hires me, but, honestly, I don’t really need them, and I frequently forget to forward a slide because I’m too busy walking around and looking into the eyes of the audience and talking with them, listening to them, etc. I like for my presentations to be lively and to have a healthy dose of discussions, with the audience chiming in throughout the presentation with their own thoughts, even answering each others’ questions, instead of all answers and information coming from me. Slide shows kill this  interaction. They kill listening. Instead, audience see glowing colored lights, audience stare at glowing colored lights, audience no listen, audience no think.
And don’t even get me started on laptops and smart phones during presentations…
Next time you are asked to do a slide show for a presentation, think about what it is you are really trying to accomplish with that slide show. Is a slide show really the right mechanism to deliver your message? Are you relying on it WAY too much?
Tags: communications, presentations, teaching, training, software, presenter, trainer, consult, consulting, briefing, communicating, outreach, interaction, audience

Online community member? Supporter? Volunteer?

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Not much sets tongues wagging more among people that work with nonprofit organizations, NGOs, or other mission-based organizations, than a debate on who is and isn’t a volunteer.

I recently had a person responsible for a Second Life community assure me that those people involved in that community are not volunteers. In 2010, NetSquared, an organization I’m a big fan of, talked about how to encourage donors to contribute their time and/or talents virtually  – and never once used the word volunteers.

I’m firmly in the big tent when it comes to who is a volunteer: if you are doing something to support a nonprofit organization, and you are not being paid for it, you are a volunteer. I don’t care if you have been assigned community service by the court or a school, if you want to be called intern, if you are online or offline, if you will be the unpaid manager in charge of an entire department during your volunteer service, if you are doing a so-called micro-assignment and you are never ever going to do one again – I’m going to call you a volunteer.

The aversion to the term volunteer is astounding to me. I’ve had co-workers passionately try to explain to me why an intern isn’t a volunteer, despite the fact that that intern is NOT being paid. Or why an online community member, who helps other online members, and offers advice and feedback, isn’t a volunteer. Or a supporter who blogs and tweets about the organization regularly – and very positively – resulting in more publicity for the organization isn’t a volunteer. Or a board member isn’t a volunteer. My response to this: NONSENSE!

Part of the reason for the aversion to calling anyone and everyone who provides support to an organization, but isn’t paid to do so, a volunteer is because of how rigid so many staff members see their roles. If online community members are volunteers, who is in charge of those volunteers? Very traditional volunteer managers who see their role as being responsible for involving all volunteers, rather than supporting all staff in involving volunteers themselves, will balk at the increased (actually, just different kind) of responsibility. The program manager responsible for an online community of supporters, or the fundraising manager responsible for working with the board members and leadership committee members, may balk at the idea of having to be more internally-transparent about his or her involvement of such people and providing reports to the volunteer manager. It means approaching work and responsibilities more as a team, and many nonprofit, NGO, government and other mission-based managers just are not ready for that, terrified that it will diminish their manager or director role.

In addition, as I said in my blog on this subject back in 2010, I’ve heard some people say that they think the word volunteer conjures an image of very traditional people (whoever they are — I’m still not sure) doing traditional things like stuffing envelopes or handing out food at a homeless shelter. I’ve heard some people say that they think the term volunteer means someone who is merely providing free labor rather than free expertise, so they prefer to talk about pro bono consultants or executives on loan. Or online community member or supporter.

Does that mean all volunteers should be managed by the same person, or that they should all be screened, supported, recognized and supervised the same way? No. Volunteers’ level of responsibility, the amount of time they are donating, the length of their commitment, the nature of their work as a volunteer – all this and more will determine how they are screened, supported, recognized and supervised.

So, once again, I’ll be a rebel: I fully embrace the word volunteer. I’m going to keep using the word volunteer to mean when a person is donating time, talent and skills, whether onsite or online.

Tags: volunteer, volunteers, online, virtual, volunteering, community, discussion, supporters, members, fans, super

Do you fear online super fans?

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TechSoup recently held an online community meetup regarding building Super Fans. The event defined super fans as people online who demonstrate a particular brand of loyalty that, once recognized, stands to benefit your organization tremendously. Super fans are those individuals who are engaged with your organization above and beyond your average supporter.

In other words, super fans are super online volunteers – super-devoted, super-passionate online volunteers. And they usually emerge on your online community, in the comments section of your blog, in the comments section of your Facebook page, on Twitter (retweeting your stuff), etc.

As I said in the comments section of this blog recap: in this era when so many are claiming that most people only want micro-volunteering, just-whenever-you-might-have-time volunteering activities, it’s nice to read an article that acknowledges there are many people who want to be online volunteers with longer term commitments and much higher responsibilities, that want to be influencers, not just unpaid task-completers, and there are organizations that really do want such volunteers.

And as I also noted in my comments: I’ve found many nonprofits greatly fear “super fans” – they fear the intensity of their passion, their motivation, their loyalty and their energy. They fear the super fans unasked-for-suggestions and ideas, their independent tweeting and blogging, their spontaneous helpfulness to “regular” online community members… In fact, many nonprofits will shut down a super fan that they feel is too “super” – not for any policy violation or inappropriate behavior, but because of the perceived pressure such a fan can put on employees and other volunteers (when they “outshine” staff in an online community).

For the record: I fear not the super fan. I might make a suggestion to an online volunteer that’s a super fan, to make it clear they when they are speaking as an individual versus a rep of the organization, to change the wording on a blog or comment to make it more accurate, to let me announce something to an online forum first, etc. I might ask that super fan to join a formal committee to explore, in a more traditional manner, this or that program activity, outreach activity, etc. But I do not want to dampen that super fan enthusiasm! I have no idea how long it will last – will the person burn themselves out in a three months? Less? Super fans are never forever.

In fact, I’ve turned a couple of online super critics into super fans… but that’s another story.

I’ve also been a super fan myself, and most of the time it’s been super appreciated – but twice over the years, indeed, I was asked to curb my enthusiasm (“please don’t post to our online forum so much”) – both times by very traditional organizations that have been around a very long time.

So, why do some nonprofits sometimes fear super fans? Is it the unofficial or non-traditional nature of super fans that causes the fear? Is it that they fear anything they can’t completely control? How do you convince a nonprofit not to fear you, the super fan?

You can leave your comments here, or you can go over to the TechSoup forum thread I’ve started on this subject and post there.

Also see:

What is “too much” from an online contributor?

The dynamics of online culture & community

How to handle online criticism

Tags: volunteer, volunteers, online, virtual, volunteering, community, discussion, enthusiasm, enthusiastic, supporters, members, fans, critics, critic

Social media policies for mission-based organizations

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Social media policies. It’s a frequently-discussed topic on so many of the online discussion groups I follow. The main point of the participants in these discussions seems to be:

How do I keep our employees from saying something online that our organization could be sued for, that could lead to negative press coverage, or could make one of our donors angry?

I have to admit that I find most of the discussions about social media at nonprofits and other mission-based organizations annoying. I’m frustrated to see nonprofit organizations, NGOs, government agencies and other mission-based organizations much more focused on how to avoid upsetting anyone than on how to be bold in pursuit of their missions. Also, I’ve been hearing about this fear since around 1995 or so, and was appalled all those years ago to watch so many organizations wring their hands over this whole cyberspace thing while other organizations embraced it, ran with it and ended up doing amazing things for their clients and communities.

David Meerman Scott has been blogging recently about the conflict between legal staff and communicators when if comes to real-time media. Scott’s blog today links to his recent missives, as well as linking to three company’s staff guidelines to social media activities that he thinks are outstanding (I do too):

Also see this list of social media policies at six different companies by from BulletProof Blog – though many of these have WAY more legalease than I think is necessary – they come from a place of fear, and that’s never a good place to come from when talking about talking and working with the community.

Why don’t I panic more over what employees and volunteers might be doing online? Because I believe if an organization has a culture where every employee and every volunteer feels responsible for the organization’s reputation, and feels a part of that organization’s success or demise, where moral is high, internal communications are excellent and a sense of team is a way of working, not just a catch phrase for the annual report, that organization has nothing to fear about its staff’s online activities – if an online misstep happens (and it will), that organization will easily recover. For organizations that are oh-so-fearful of online activities: perhaps there’s something else you should be worrying about?

Also see:

Handling an Online Social Media Faux Paux (props to the American Red Cross!)

How to Handle Online Criticism

Evaluating Online Activities: Online Action Should Create & Support Offline Action

Using RSS for Media Monitoring

Social media: cutting both ways since the 1990s

Need a Social Media Policy? Maybe Yes, Maybe No.

Tags: policy, guideline, guidelines, staff, employee, employees, volunteer, volunteers, lawyer, lawyers, legal

TweetChat re: virtual teams on July 11

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TechSoup will host a TweetChat on 11.July at 10am Pacific USA Time regarding working with virtual teams.

Also known as distributed teams, virtual teams have come together for a day, a week, many months or even years to work on a project together for a nonprofit, an NGO or other mission-based organization. Your organization may already be involving a virtual team now and not even know it:

  • a committee with members who discuss and plan online rather than at onsite meetings
  • a mix of volunteers and employees collaborating on the development of a new online tool
  • a group of volunteers around the world working together to develop an HIV education curriculum

I’m particularly interested in this topic, as I’m currently revising the Virtual Volunteering Guidebook – specifically, I’m revisiting yet again this week the chapter that addresses the subject of virtual teams, a subject that did not appear in detail in the original book. I have been compiling resources and case studies on the subject for quite a while now, and want to make sure the chapter that includes this subject addresses all the fundamental elements required for virtual team success, no matter what online tools you may use with such a team. Woe to the volunteer manager – or any nonprofit professional – who does not know how to work with virtual teams!

You can watch the TechSoup event on Twitter as it happens on July 11 (and even participate!) or look in to the archive of the chat later. Here’s more info from TechSoup on how to participate.

I have more details about live tweet events here on my web site, on this page about using micro-blogging, in case you are wondering what this will event will really look like.

Follow me on Twitter @jcravens42, and follow @TechSoup as well, so you will stay up-to-date about this and other events to help build the capacity of nonprofits, NGOs, libraries, and other organizations that involve community members to meet their goals.

Tags: volunteering, volunteers, community, engagement, international, volunteerism, volunteering, collaborative, collaboration, virtual, teams, staff, employees

What is impressive, what is not

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Things I’m not impressed by:

  • How many Facebook “likes” or “friends” your organization has
  • How many times your organization “tweets” or your tweet has been retweeted
  • That your organization received an “award” from one of your VENDORS
  • That you “gave up” a corporate career to work in the nonprofit sector
  • How many hours your volunteers contributed last year
  • How many hours of overtime your organization’s employees work most weeks
  • That you are hiring a Rock Star-anything (Rock Star Membership Coordinator, Rock Star Social Media Manager) unless you are PAYING a Rock Star salary and providing Rock Star benefits.
  • Your web site’s use of stock photos
  • That your new web site is coming soon and all your descriptions of how great it’s going to be.

Things I am impressed by:

  • Online activities leading to offline action
  • How your organization handles negative comments on your Facebook page
  • That your organization was recognized by your Governor’s volunteering awards
  • That your tweet last week resulted in a $5000 donation (or more) than you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise
  • What your volunteers accomplished last year, in terms of tangible results (literacy among your clients increased, trees planted, perceptions changed, legislation passed, etc.)
  • Volunteers in leadership positions at your organization (leading a project, serving on an advisory board regarding marketing and outreach, producing a publication or online video, etc.)
  • Happy employees that love going to work and supporting each other, that love collaborating internally and sharing information and resources with each other
  • A competitive salary and benefits package for employees
  • Photos of your own organization’s actual volunteers or clients, however out-of-focus such may be
  • That your new web site is launched, on time, that it’s easy to navigate, that I can quickly find what I’m looking for without having to sit through a video or shut down your blaring audio that starts up automatically, that it works with any browser, and that you obviously incorporated the suggestions of others into the new design.

 

Zombies aren’t real, but disaster preparedness is

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As has been reported in all over the news for the last few days, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the USA has released a new document that offers suggestions on how to prepare for a zombie invasion. Here’s a nice blog summary of the CDC’s recommendations.

The recommendations are serious, even if the reason is not what the CDC is trying to do is get people to have the preparations in place for a variety of real possible disasters: destructive storms, earthquakes, floods, etc. And it turns out that the preparation for a fictional attack – could be zombies, could be space pirates – are surprisingly similar for reality disaster scenarios.

It’s a daring exercise by the CDC. I love it, but I’m already hearing pundits say, “This is what the CDC uses our tax dollars for? To be cute?” But the CDC isn’t trying to be cute; it’s trying to get the message out about disaster preparedness to people who aren’t getting traditional messages. There have been so many disasters just in the USA lately – massive flooding and highly-destructive tornadoes – not to mention the disasters overseas, and many people are becoming unconsciously resistant to calls to be prepared. 

The CDCs effort is getting huge media play, so the message is definitely reaching many more people. But is this campaign really a success? It’s a media success, certainly, but to know if this is really garnering outcomes, the CDC will have to find out if people really are better prepared for a disaster. Are more people storing the appropriate amounts of water, food, medications, tools and supplies, etc., as a result of this campaign? Have more people sat down with their families and come up with an emergency plan as a result of this campaign? Are all the people blogging and tweeting about this also making appropriate preparations? (before you ask – my husband and I have been prepared for natural disasters, zombie attacks and space pirates for many years now)

And note that the very real disaster of Joplin, Missouri is unfolding before our eyes, and as I am sitting here watching TV and writing this blog, a Joplin official is begging people NOT TO COME INTO THE CITY. Gawkers and un-prepared do-gooders are already getting in the way of rescue and relief efforts. If you don’t have training and resources to help people and animals in that area, if you aren’t prepared to be completely self-sufficient while in the area, providing for your own gas, food, shelter and safety while you are there, please stay away!

If you want to help Joplin, donate to the American Red Cross office nearest the area or to the national office. Also, look for animal shelters serving the area Joplin, Missouri area – all those that are not damaged will soon be over capacity with dogs, cats, horses and other pets and livestock from the area. They will be desperate for funds to transport animals elsewhere, provide food and medical care to the animals they have, etc.

And don’t forget Alabama: The Tuscaloosa Metro Animal Shelter is in desperate need of support, as they are completely overwhelmed with lost and abandoned pets, as is the Humane Society of West Alabama. The Greater Birmingham Humane Society will also need help with the influx of lost and abandoned pets. Making a donation will help buy food and pay for medical services. Adopting a pet from this or any nearby shelter will free up space for other animals.

Here’s advice for Volunteering To Help After Major Disasters. Please call your local American Red Cross and get training NOW for disasters LATER. They have training specifically for disaster response! Or consider volunteering with your local animal shelter NOW and build up your skills and your credibility so that you will be in a place to provide critically-need help in the future.

AND HAVE AN EVACUATION PLAN THAT INCLUDES YOUR PETS!!!

Social media realities for Friday

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logoSome resources, stories and events regarding social media that will help you balance all the hype with the reality of using such:

  1. TechSoup’s final live Twitter chat in its Nonprofit Social Media 101 (NPSM101) series is Monday, May 23 at 9 a.m. Pacific Time USA. Join in for a lively discussion on the value, ways to use, and best practices in tagging. Tagging is used in almost all major social sites, including 5 of the 6 TechSoup features in its newly launched NPSM101 wiki (Flickr, Delicious, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook). Thinking about how to tag your messages and photos will substantially increase the number of people viewing your online activities – and, ultimately, getting involved in your organization. You participate in this TechSoup Twitter Chat by following the tag #nptagging on Twitter, and including that tag in any of your own questions or responses during the event. You can also follow on this Tweetchat.com link. A Twitter chat event an intense experience, but I have enjoyed my participation in two of the last three TechSoup events way more than I thought I would.
  2. Few charities are raising significant amounts of money via social media, says a recent study regarding such. Fewer than 3 percent of the survey’s 11,196 nonprofit respondents reported raising more than $10,000 through such tools. Does that mean nonprofits, NGOs and other mission-based organizations engaging in social media isn’t really worth the effort? No. But it does mean that we need to stop talking about social media the way so many talked about the web back in the 1990s – that just having a presence will be a financial windfall. Donations come from cultivation, trust-building and proven results that an organization is getting results. Social media needs to be used strategically, and should be integrated into a variety of other, OFFline activities.
  3. By posing as a savvy junior analyst or a graduate student seeking sources for a paper, some people have been successful at building relationships with employees at certain companies and getting those employees to divulge sensitive information, as this story relates. I find it amusing that people ask me endless questions about Internet security related to protecting their nonprofit organization from a hacker, or preventing volunteers from violating confidentiality policies while never wondering if paid staff might do the same, but they never think about this very real scenario: staff willingly handing over information in a kind of online seduction. Confidentiality is an onling training issue, one that needs to be revisited repeatedly at organizations, and this proves it.
  4. Social media will be used against you. That’s one of the statements by an organizer of the Social Media, Internet and Law Enforcement conference in Chicago. Police have been using social networking sites to identify and investigate suspects, but now criminals are using such sites to identify and investigate law enforcement officers, including undercover police. In addition, hostage-takers and suspects who barricade themselves in buildings are monitoring social media to track police movements in real time, and gang members are launching their own surveillance operations targeting police. Nonprofits, NGOs and other mission-based organizations often have activists working against their work as well, and need to remember that those program saboteurs are also online.
  5. The U.S. State Department has quietly abandoned its America.gov site to refocus its efforts on social media. And I think it’s a bad idea. Not the social media part, but the abandoning the web part. Embrace social media – but do NOT get rid of your web site!

Happy Friday, everyone.

Ever-Changing Landscape of Nonprofits & Technology

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What nonprofits are doing now with the Internet is not much different from what online nonprofits were doing in the 1980s and early 1990s – offering questions to their networks to see what answers they might get (crowd-sourcing), talking about challenges they are facing and offering each other advice, reaching out to current and potential supporters, promoting activities and events, working with volunteers, etc. You can read more about these early days of nonprofits and the Internet in the 1980s, through 1995.

By 1990, there were already several nonprofit organizations and many dedicated volunteers and aspiring consultants who were helping to promote nonprofit use of the Internet and computer technology. Some of these organizations helping nonprofits with Internet technology survived and some didn’t. Their networks of regional offices grew – and sometimes broke up, with individual members going off in new directions. Some changed their names, and some changed their missions.

One of the organizations that grew late in this movement, NPower, a national network of nonprofit technology consulting and training organizations, is now restructuring, and this article in the Nonprofit Times details this restructuring, as well as touching on the ever-changing landscape of support organizations for nonprofits and Internet technology. And it’s written by Tim Mills-Groninger, someone who has been immersed in the nonprofits and tech scene as long as I have (and that’s a frighteningly long time, relatively speaking), so it’s details are right-on.

I know this isn’t breaking news. But it’s important news, because nonprofit organizations, NGOs, schools, libraries and other mission-based organizations need to know where they’ve been in order to know where they are going. Mistakes that were made in those early days of tech are being made again as the Internet gets rebranded as the Cloud and online social networking, as episodic online volunteering gets rebranded as microvolunteering, and as people are starting nonprofits or social enterprises to do with Facebook or Twitter what many nonprofits were doing with USENET back in the 1980s. Let’s learn from those mistakes instead of repeating them!

Handling a social media faux pax

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I love this! Not the faux pax (actually, the faux pax is hilarious), but the brilliant way it was handled:

In February 2011, someone mistakenly tweeted from the American Red Cross account something that was meant to come from that person’s personal Twitter account. The tweet involved beer.

The American Red Cross said in their blog about the event:

We realized our honest mistake (the Tweeter was not drunk) and deleted the above Tweet. We all know that it’s impossible to really delete a tweet like this, so we acknowledged our mistake

And they acknowledged it with both a humorous tweet and this blog.

And here’s the kicker: the Twittersphere immediately embraced the mix-up and many pledged donations to the Red Cross! The beer brand that was named in the accidental tweet, as well as the micro brew community, jumped on board and further encouraged donations to the Red Cross.

Kudos to the American Red Cross for not putting together a crisis communications response committee, spending hours / days in meetings on developing a response strategy and then issuing formal apologies written in corporate-ease. No, instead, you handled it immediately, with humor and common sense, and knowing your supporters would do the same. You have cultivated meaningful relationships with the public and supporters for many years, and that cultivation paid off. That’s the kind of resilient, responsive, dynamic approach that will keep the American Red Cross around for another 130 or so years.

Other national organizations… they aren’t even reading this blog right now but, instead, are in a communications meeting to discuss if, perhaps, they might want to start posting to Facebook, or if, instead, they want to ban on use of such by their employees and volunteers – their fourth meeting about such in the last 12 months…

Red Cross – you are full of win!