Tag Archives: campaign

“Gender & Politics” Panel, Washington County, Oregon

Leave a reply

Last week, I had the honor of moderating a panel discussion on “Gender & Politics” in Washington County, Oregon. The discussion was hosted by the local chapter of the American Association of University Women (AAUW) and was held at Taylor Auditorium at Pacific University.

The panel featured three women holding voter-elected offices in Washington County: See Eun Kim, a Hillsboro School Board member, Kate Grandusky of Gales Creek and the Forest Grove School Board, and Felicita Monteblanco and Chair of the Tualatin Hills Park and Recreation District Board of Directors.

Women’s involvement in government, and their overall civic engagement, is something I’m passionate about. I’ve participated in initiatives that support this abroad, including in Afghanistan, and it’s fascinating to participate in initiatives here in the USA – so many of the challenges are exactly the same. Since moving to Oregon in 2009, I made it a personal mission to encourage more civic engagement by everyone, including women, by posting on various social media channels every publicly-announced opportunity I could find for the public to hear from city council members and county officials where I live, local state representatives and senators and national officeholders, as well as those running for any elected office. I’ve also made it a goal to engage much more myself, such as serving on the Canby Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee, the Forest Grove Public Safety Advisory Commission and the Washington County Cultural Trust, as well as joining and volunteering with the League of Women Voters – Washington County Unit.

It was because of these activities that I was invited to be the moderator of this gender and politics panel here in the county where I live in Oregon. It was an opportunity to hear first hand from local women about their experiences in running for public office, the systemic changes needed they might think are needed for more women in office, and what we can do to encourage more women to run. And it was a terrific cross-section on the panel, in terms of ages and ethnic identities.

Before the discussion began, I noted a few things about women in politics in the USA and in Washington County, Oregon specifically:

  • Women make up at least half of the population here in the USA. Yet, as of now, women represent just over 20 percent of US Congress members – but that’s IS a record with just over 100 women serving. One of those members is the representative for our area here in Oregon, Suzanne Bonamichi (yeah!).
  • While it’s a record number of women overall in the US Congress, it’s the lowest number of Republican women in the House in a quarter-century (just 13).
  • Women have run for President and for Vice President in the USA, but have never held those offices. Meanwhile, many other countries, including the UK, Germany, New Zealand, and Pakistan are, or have been, lead by women.
  • In Washington County, of our 13 Oregon state representatives, 6 are women – that’s almost half.
  • There are five members of the Washington County Board of Commissioners, and two of them, including the chair, are women. The chair is Kathryn Harrington and member Pam Treece represents District 2.
  • In Forest Grove, where the panel was held, of the seven members of the city council, three are women: Councilor Elena Uhing and Malynda Wenzl, both elected, and the newest council member, recently appointed Councilor Mariana Valenzuela.

Some food for thought I offered as moderator to set the tone for the evening:

  • 2018 data from the Pew Research Center shows that Republican and Republican-leaning women are roughly twice as likely (44 percent) as Republican men (24 percent) to say that there are too few women in office, and are also significantly more likely to say that it’s easier for men to get into office.
  • Majorities of Republican women, Democratic women, and Democratic men say that women have to do more to prove themselves, compared to that 28 percent of GOP men. Likewise, while nearly half of GOP women and majorities of Democrats believe discrimination keeps women from office, compared to just 14 percent of GOP men.
  • Republican women are also significantly more likely than men in their party to say that sexual harassment, differences in party support, and voters “not being ready” to elect women keep women out of office.
  • Like Republican men, Democratic men are significantly less likely than their female counterparts to believe that Americans “aren’t ready to elect a woman to higher office.”
  • The poll also shows that Americans see women and men as having different abilities regarding both leadership and policy.

Some things I learned from the panelists’ comments:

  • None had run for office before and all said a version of, “I didn’t know how to run. I never did anything like this before!”
  • Two of the three were graduates of the Emerge program and said it was incredibly helpful in their campaigns. Those two also felt being mentored by women who had run for office was essential to their success and says there is a need for even more mentoring.
  • All three said personal connections with the community they wanted to represent and “social capital” were fundamental to their success as candidates and as officeholders. All of them knew a lot of people in their communities and were trusted by those people.
  • Two noted that women need to start asking, explicitly, for childcare to be provided at candidate forums, city council meetings, school board meetings, etc., if we truly want more women involved in politics.
  • One noted that, for many women, “We do not look in the mirror and see a candidate. But many men do look in the mirror and say, ‘I should run for office!” She also talked about imposter syndrome (something that I also suffer from!).
  • Two members of the panel noted that it was important to never be embarrassed to ask questions or to not know Roberts Rules of Order, that if someone says, “You are not following the rules!”, immediately ask for guidance and advice on how to do it.
  • One emphasized something I emphasize myself: go to the meetings of the government body you want to serve on. If you are going to run for school board, you need to be going to school board meetings. Become familiar, first hand, with how it works.

Here is the article in the Forest Grove News-Times newspaper about the event, and it does a good job of summarizing the candidates’ comments from the evening.

Questions I didn’t get to ask:

  • Do you feel like people have treated you differently as a candidate or serving in office because you are a woman and, if so, could you give an example of this?
  • How do you handle criticism?
  • How do you achieve work/life/office/family/volunteer balance?

An observation that I found startling as I listened to the panelists: they were focused on policies and actions regarding health, education, housing and the environment – and never once mentioned anything about how to help businesses. I don’t think any are anti-business, but I find it fascinating that talk of business-friendly policies that absolutely dominate political discussions with male candidates and officeholders wasn’t mentioned at all by these panelists.

As moderator, I tried to keep my statements at the event at a minimum – this was an event to hear from the panelists, not me. But what I would add to the advice about getting more women to serve in office:

  • Take your daughters, other female family members and friends to a city council meeting, to a school board meeting, to a candidate debate, or anything else that would expose them to how local government works.
  • Encourage your daughters, nieces, sisters, etc. to run for leadership roles at school or in any groups they are in. Celebrate them even if they don’t win the leadership position.
  • Discourage everyone in your life from disparaging a female candidate or an officeholder’s appearance – her hair, her makeup, her style of clothes, etc. – and her voice. Encourage discussion instead of a candidate’s opinions, positions and actions, including criticism. Watch carefully what you yourself say about any female officeholder, candidate or other leader (or aspiring leader).
  • Teach young women how to walk into a room for the express purpose of networking. Talk about how to approach a group, how to introduce yourself, how to shake hands, how to be culturally appropriate if you realize someone might not shake hands, etc.
  • If you have any doubts about your public speaking abilities, join your local chapter of Toastmasters.
  • Remember that you have EVERY right to take up space in any room, in any conversation. Take up that space and own it.

I could say so much more… I desperately want a diversity of more women on citizens’ advisory committees, including planning commissions, in addition to wanting a woman President and Vice-President. I want to support that happening anyway I can.

Also see these related blogs:

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

How did volunteers impact the 2016 USA Presidential election?

Leave a reply

social cohesionIn 2012, I knew that President Obama was going to be re-elected because of the number of people volunteering for his campaign was far, far more than the Mitt Romney campaign. And I was right.

Four years later, I thought, like most everyone, that Secretary Hillary Clinton was going to win because, like President Obama, she had a far superior official deployment of volunteers, and management of such, than the Donald Trump campaign. She did, indeed, win the popular vote, garnering more than two million more votes than Trump and also receiving more votes than any person in the history of the USA for President except for President Obama. But she lost the election because of the USA’s archaic electoral college rules. Even with that popular vote win, however, the race was far, far closer than I ever expected, given the massive difference in volunteer numbers for the two campaigns.

PBS profiled the gap in the number of Trump volunteers versus those of the Clinton campaign in August, noting “the Trump campaign faces a jaw-dropping gap in the ground game: Hillary Clinton currently has more than three times the number of campaign offices in critical states than does Donald Trump.” As of Aug. 30, Clinton had 291 offices in 15 battleground states, compared to just 88 for Trump. Clinton was using a refined version of the data-driven, on-the-ground volunteering machine that won two elections for Barack Obama. “Trump, on the other hand, insists he does not need traditional campaign tactics to win the election, pointing to his overwhelming nomination victory achieved with a relatively small team and little spending.”

Then, in early November, FoxNews.com noted that, while Trump had far, far fewer official offices and official volunteers than Clinton, he had people acting entirely independently on behalf of his campaign, “an army of volunteers who began boosting his ground game, in some cases, before the professionals got heavily involved.” The outlet “talked to volunteers in five western states who were among Trump’s main source of on-the-ground support at a time when neither the Trump campaign nor the RNC had dedicated staff.” These volunteers were calling friends, hosting campaign parties, posting signs, sharing information on social media and registering voters, entirely on their own, with no official direction.

Volunteers who officially signed up for Donald Trump’s campaign, to help with phone banking, had to sign a lengthy, jargon-filled nondisclosure agreement that would prevent them from saying anything bad about the GOP nominee, his family, companies or products for the rest of their lives. You can see the entire contract here and highlights of the most outrageous parts of the agreement here. By contrast, Hillary Clinton’s campaign didn’t require phone bank volunteers to sign any sort of agreement – which was probably a big factor in her having far more official volunteers. And also by contrast, unofficial volunteers for Trump also never signed any agreement, and there was no organization counting them in the official volunteer rolls – they took their campaign action ideas from each other, not the campaign.

The reality is that this election was not won by volunteers nor volunteer management. In fact, a headline of one of my earlier blogs, Volunteers are more important than social media in Presidential elections, has been proven wrong by this election, as my blog before the one you are reading now details. Social media DID win this election. It proved an ideal vehicle for promoting misinformation and generating fear and excitement that turned into action. As I noted in my last blog, BuzzFeed reported that fake news stories about the USA Presidential election this year generated more engagement on Facebook than the top election stories from 19 major news outlets COMBINED – that included major news outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and NBC News, and on and on. And the majority of these fake news stories did NOT come from any campaign operatives; rather, they came from a man in Los Angeles who originally built fake news sites as a way to expose the extreme right, a plan that most certainly did NOT work. And these fake stories, most of which promoted Trump for President and made false claims regarding Hillary Clinton, were shared by millions of people via social media – independent, passionate volunteers who believed them.

What does this mean for the future of volunteer engagement in Presidential elections? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Also see:

Al Gore Campaign Pioneered Virtual Volunteering

Update:
Donald Trump might be more popular than you think, from Politico, Feb. 2, 2017

When “participatory” & “consultation” are just words

2 Replies

social cohesionWhen you work in humanitarian initiatives in other countries, whether your project concerns water or HIV/AIDS or maternal health or vaccines or bridge construction or government web sites or whatever, your nonprofit headquarters and your donors will emphasize over and over that you must employ ways for the local people to participate in decision-making.1,2

Yet, too often participatory decision-making doesn’t happen in developed countries, by the governments that fund overseas initiatives and demand details about how participatory decision-making was assured.

The backlash against the European Commission (the government of the European Union), manifested most recently by Brexit and the Belgian region of Wallonia rejecting a long-planned free trade pact between the EU and Canada3, are great examples of lack of participatory decision-making.

So is the anger in Portland, Oregon regarding the new contract with Portland Police Department4, 5

And so is the anger and protests regarding the Dakota Access Pipeline. The pipeline is being built by Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners and will transport as many as 570,000 barrels of crude oil daily from North Dakota to Illinois. The Midwest Alliance for Infrastructure Now, a group that supports the pipeline, says 100% of the affected landowners in North Dakota, where part of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe lives, voluntarily signed easements to allow for construction, and the Army Corps of Engineers, the consulting agency for the project, has a list of dates it said it contacted the tribe, or tried to and never heard back.6, 7 In addition, government officials believe they have followed the consultation process promoted by the President’s office in 2010.8

But the Seattle Times says “Environmental documents filed by the company show that during its permit application the tribe was not even listed in the entities consulted during a piecemeal, fast-track review of the project by the Corps. Company contractors contacted the county weed board, the Audubon Society, county commissioners and more. But not the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, permitting documents show.” The company has not allowed the tribe’s archaeological experts to review the ground in the path of the pipeline as it comes toward Standing Rock. The tribe’s expert, Tim Mentz Sr., in a review at the invitation of a private landowner, discovered some important artifacts, including stone effigies, burial sites and rare depictions of celestial constellations. The Seattle Times says, “So confident was Energy Transfer Partners that its work would go smoothly, that it started building the pipeline last spring, long before it had all its last permits in hand.”9

There can be no argument that tribes have been historically unable to influence projects that affect them and the land they hold sacred so this feels like just yet another land grab against native people in the USA that will marginalize them and hurt their lives. Sarah Krakoff, a professor at the University of Colorado specializing in American Indian Law and Natural Resources Law, says, “Sometimes what the agencies think of as adequate and with all good intentions do not feel adequate from the tribal side. Either because the process isn’t meaningful to them, it doesn’t accord with their timeframe or decision frame.”

Even when participatory decision-making is emphasized, the actions taken that are supposed to provide ways for lots of different people to influence what’s happening can be just for show; any community activist can tell a story about meticulously capturing the input of a group through a variety of listening exercises, only to have all that feedback utterly ignored in the final plans. I don’t know that this happened in the case of the Dakota Access Pipeline, but I’ve seen it happen overseas in my own humanitarian agency work; it’s infuriating.

And even well-done participatory decision-making isn’t always enough to keep protests at bay: until 2016, the ongoing consultative processes regarding the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge between local people, including ranchers, birders, outdoor enthusiasts, environmentalists, tribal members and others was considered a model for other communities. But that process, including a landmark 2013 agreement, didn’t stop people from far outside the area from using guns and force to invade the refuge, occupy it and cause many thousands of dollars in damage, including to private property and tribal lands.10, 11

On a related note, social media posts the Dakota Access Pipeline are often tagged with #NoDAPL, and slackervism / slactivism abounds, with people posting memes in support of the the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, or adjusting their Facebook page to show they are at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation when they actually aren’t.12 It’s supposed to somehow create support for the tribe and to confuse law enforcement authorities regarding who is at Standing Rock and who isn’t, but Snopes points out that there’s no record that such has helped at all, including in attracting more “material assistance.”13

Since I’m really not fond of slacktivism, here are ways to REALLY help re: #NoDAPL without leaving your house or coffee shop or wherever you are with Internet and phone access :

(1) Call North Dakota governor Jack Dalrymple at 701-328-2200, leaving a RESPECTFUL, firm message on this subject (I find writing out the statement & reading from it helps me).

(2) Call the White House at (202) 456-1111 or (202) 456-1414 & tell President Obama to rescind the Army Corps of Engineers’ Permit for the Dakota Access Pipeline.

(3) Sign the petition at petitions.whitehouse.gov

(4) Contact the executives of Energy Transfer Partners that are building the pipeline:

Lee Hanse, Executive Vice President
Telephone: (210) 403-6455 or email: Lee.Hanse@energytransfer.com

Glenn Emery, Vice President
Telephone: (210) 403-6762 or email: Glenn.Emery@energytransfer.com

Also see:

Sources:

  1. Oil workers and oil communities: counterplanning from the commons in Nigeria, Terisa E. Turner 1997
  2. LEFT BEHIND; As Oil Riches Flow, Poor Village Cries Out, New York Times
  3. Wallonia rejects EU ultimatum over Canada free trade deal, EuroNews
  4. Portland City Council approves police contract amid unruly protest, Oregon Live
  5. Why protesters are mad about the police contract, Oregon Live
  6. What to Know About the Dakota Access Pipeline Protests, Time
  7. Tribal Consultation At Heart Of Pipeline Fight, insideenergy.org
  8. Guidance for Implementing E.O. 13175, “Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribal Governments” , whitehouse.gov
  9. The violent Dakota Access Pipeline protest raged for hours — until this tribal elder stepped in, Seattle Times
  10. Audubon Society of Portland Statement on the Occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge
  11. Beyond the Oregon Protests: The Search for Common Ground, Environment 360, Yale University
  12. Standing Rock Facebook Check-in, CNN
  13. Facebook check-in at Standing Rock, Snopes

Volunteers are more important than social media in Presidential elections

Leave a reply

Please see the end of this blog for an update nine months later.

graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteersLast night, the public radio show Marketplace here in the USA did an excellent story about the vital role volunteers play in a successful Presidential campaign. Social media is great, but the reality is that it’s old-fashioned volunteer engagement – people calling neighbors to get out the vote, driving neighbors to the polls, etc. – that wins elections. The story is available for free online, and if you are outside the USA and can’t access it, just download Hotspot Shield – you’ll be able to using that.

My favorite points from the article:

“It takes $670,000 dollars in ad buys in a general election to get the same number of estimated votes as you would by opening a field office which is about $21,000 dollars to maintain throughout an election season.” — Joshua Darr, assistant professor of political communication at Louisiana State University, quoted in the article.

“Donald Trump’s performance in Iowa has widely been blamed on his lack of volunteer organizing. ”

“Networks of lawn-trodding volunteers aren’t something you can just whip up overnight, and the people who build these networks are not a dime a dozen.”

I’m THRILLED with this story. It touches on so many things I promote in my work: that highly-skilled managers of volunteers, fully supported and funded, are required for effective volunteer engagement, that volunteers are not free, and that, sometimes, volunteers are the BEST people to do a task.

For the record, I knew President Obama was going to win re-election, despite what the polls were saying, because his campaign was getting new volunteers, and keeping volunteers, all over the country, right up to election day, while Romney’s campaign was closing offices many weeks before. And when I volunteer for political campaigns, I always rewrite the script I’m given, so that the first thing I always say is, “Hi, I’m Jayne Cravens, and I’m a volunteer with the such-and-such campaign,” because I know the person on the other end is much more likely to listen to me knowing I’m a volunteer, not a paid staffer.

And note: volunteer engagement might be cheaper than national news spots, but it still costs money. I know a lot of managers of volunteers that would love $21,000 for their volunteer engagement… and with that said, be sure to sign this petition at Change.org that calls on Congress to provide funding for the effective management of the volunteers it is requiring public lands, including National Forests, to involve.

vvbooklittleSuch a shame people managing presidential campaigns, senate campaigns, congressional campaigns, grassroots campaigns – whatever the campaign – aren’t buying The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook in bulk! Tools come and go, but certain community engagement principles never change, and our book can be used with the very latest digital engagement initiatives and “hot” new technologies meant to help people volunteer, advocate for causes they care about, connect with communities and make a difference.

— end original blog —

November 28, 2016 update:

I was wrong. This election was not won by volunteers nor by volunteer management. As my November 28 blog details, social media DID win this election. It proved an ideal vehicle for promoting misinformation. As I noted in my last blog, BuzzFeed reported that fake news stories about the USA Presidential election this year generated more engagement on Facebook than the top election stories from 19 major news outlets COMBINED – that included major news outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and NBC News, and on and on. And the majority of these fake news stories did NOT come from any campaign operatives; rather, they came from a man in Los Angeles who originally built fake news sites to as a way to expose the extreme right, a plan that most certainly did NOT work. And these fake stories, most of which promoted Trump as a candidate, were shared by millions of people via social media – people who believed them, and most of whom never signed up to be an official Trump campaign volunteer. See my November 28 blog for more details. A blog in December offers even more details on how volunteers were engaged, officially and unofficially, in this campaign, and how a well-managed, vast army of volunteers did NOT win this election.

Ugh – Slacktivism (I still don’t like it)

Leave a reply

UNICEF Sweden has an image that’s floating around the Internet and causing quite a stir:

“Like us on Facebook, and we will vaccinate zero children against polio. We have nothing against likes, but vaccine costs money…”

It’s part of a fundraising and awareness campaign by UNICEF Sweden that includes this video  (subtitled in English). The point is a powerful one: “liking” something on Facebook, or sharing a status update, or retweeting something, often has no impact at all beyond a momentary “Oh, that’s sad” moment for the viewer. By itself, it does NOT create any real impact.

Danny Brown, a blogger and author, doesn’t like the campaign; he thinks slacktivism or slackervism campaigns – where a person is encouraged to “like” something on Facebook and feel like he or she has made a difference – are terrific.

As I’ve said before, I LOATHE slacktivism. As a consultant and researcher that works with nonprofits every day regarding community engagement and fundraising, I see again and again just what little return on investment the vast majority of nonprofits get for investing in such campaigns. I also see the endless posts by young people on YahooAnswers who believe this is all they have to do – like something or click on something – to make a difference, and don’t understand why they have to actually volunteer or donate something to actually support a cause. These campaigns imply that actually donating money, volunteering, writing a letter to a politician or turning out for a demonstration aren’t really necessary – just click “like” and we’ll solve domestic violence, homelessness, hunger animal abuse, and on and on! It’s a misconception that is growing – and it’s creating generations of people who don’t see the point of actually investing time or money.

I note in detail in this blog from 2010 why slacktivism does NOT generate donations or increased awareness for most nonprofits or causes – and the blog also notes nonprofits CAN (and do) use Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites to create a real social marketing/health marketing campaign, with real impact (changed behavior, new awareness, etc.) – so I won’t repeat myself here.

And for those who want to accuse me of being a Luddite, or implying that the Internet isn’t an effective way to donate time and talent to a nonprofit, NGO, charity, etc. – I’ve been promoting virtual volunteering since the mid-1990s. Online action can have HUGE impact for a mission-based organization. But it takes more than just a “like” on Facebook. 

Also see: what ROI for online action really looks like.

A volunteerism blog, not a political one

Leave a reply

During this election season in the USA, there has been a lot of talk about the role volunteers played in the work of various campaigns, including the presidential campaign. But most of it has focused on the “free labor” aspect. Yet, as we all know (right?!), volunteers are NOT free.

 

The reason volunteers were effective in various campaigns this time around – and, well, always – isn’t because they were unpaid labor. Rather, it was because volunteers were the best people for certain tasks, and could do certain tasks far better than paid staff.

 

I got a lot of phone calls related to the election for the last three months. I realized after several of them that, when the person said, “I’m calling from the such-and-such campaign…”, I almost always interrupted them at some point, even if they were calling from a cause or campaign I supported, to say, “Hi, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I have absolutely no money to donate to the campaign whatsoever.” But when the person said, “I’m a volunteer, and I’m helping with the such-and-such campaign…” I let them finish their spiel and answered all of their questions (but still couldn’t give money).

 

I thought about why I was doing that, why I was being so much kinder to the volunteers, and the answer was, for me: the people that are volunteers are supporters of such-and-such campaign, no question. A lot of people will do anything for a paycheck and, therefore, I wonder if the motivation for the political call from someone who is being paid isn’t actually all about the commission they are trying to make for every person that donates. With a volunteer, I know, absolutely, that that person is volunteering from a passion for that candidate. And I want to be a part of that.

I ended up volunteering for a campaign because one of those callers said, up front, that he was a volunteer and he was NOT calling for money – rather, he was calling to see if I would be voting, if I would be supporting a certain presidential candidate, and if I wanted to volunteer. And I said yes. And there was something so warm and energizing about sitting in another volunteer’s house, with lots of other volunteers, calling potential voters on my cell phone, rather than being paid to sit in a corporate-esque phone bank making calls – do you think people could hear that in my voice? I do.

 

That is not to say people that are paid to work on campaigns don’t have passion. I have been paid to do public relations and marketing, and I’m quite passionate about the causes I’ve been paid to promote – I’m not sure I could do the same for something I don’t really feel personally supportive of. I used to cringe when I worked at the UN Volunteers program and people would try to say that UN Volunteers had more passion than UNDP workers in the field – having worked in the field, I could never tell the different in what contract someone had just based on the passion they exhibited, or didn’t in the field.

 

But the fact remains that, often, the public responds more positively to someone that says, “I’m a volunteer” than they do to a person that says, “I’m an employee.” And exactly the opposite is true as well in certain situations – some people will refuse to work with “just a volunteer”, even if that person has more qualifications and expertise than a paid employee of the same organization.

It goes back to what I’ve said again and again: for some tasks, volunteers are the best people for the job, and for some tasks, employees or paid consultants are the best people for the job, and it does NOT have to do with saving money!

Also see:

Writing a mission statement for your organization or program.

Going all-volunteer in dire economic times: use with caution

The Value of Volunteers (and how to talk about such)

learning from a campaign that went viral

2 Replies

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:

voldemort protests kony

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:

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)

Could your organization be deceived by GOTCHA media?

Leave a reply

Not everyone loves your nonprofit organization. Not everyone loves your non-governmental organization (NGO), civil society organization, or government agency. In fact, there is at least one individual, and maybe even a group, that would like nothing better than to hurt your organization in a very public way.

You may think no one would launch a negative campaign against your beloved organization that protects wildlife or works to educate children from low-income communities or helps women fleeing abusive relationships or encourages people to spay and neuter their pets or helps people grow their own food or brings the joy of live theater to your town. You may think:

Our organization is completely non-threatening to anyone. We’re a-political. We’re politically benign. No one would want to see our organization go away. We benefit everyone!

The truth is that every cause can become politicized, and every organization can become a political target.

I learned this while working in public relations and marketing for nonprofit professional theaters in New England back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when arts groups became the target of a very vocal, well-funded political force who felt all local, state and national government funding for theater companies, dance companies, museums and other arts organizations should be cut off. They declared such funding not only a waste of money, but also as promoting pornography and un-American values. And they had snippets of plays and photos from various exhibits that, out-of-context, seemed to prove their case to the public and the press. I felt completely unprepared as I helped book a very famous actor to debate a very famous televangelist on the subject, on a new network called CNN, and wrote talking points – I’d never been trained for such a response. I never expected to have to do anything like that for an arts organization.

Since then, in various jobs, I’ve interacted with people I later found out weren’t really representatives of the press, weren’t really independent documentary film makers, and weren’t volunteering to help with a mailing because they believed so passionately in this or that cause. Luckily, the discovery of who they really were was always made early enough such that no damage was done – usually before a first face-to-face meeting even took place. I learned to always confirm someone really did represent whatever organization they claimed to, no matter how nice they sounded on the phone, and to always vet every potential volunteer, no matter how enthusiastic and well-qualified they seemed initially – and that was before I had the Internet to help me research people. Subterfuge has been attempted at almost every organization I’ve ever been a part of, no matter what the mission.

Over the last 20 years, I have seen seemingly-benign causes come under voracious attack again and again, the latest being National Public Radio. Your organization may not be big enough to become the target of gotcha right-wing film-maker James O’Keefe, who also brought down the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn), a collection of community-based organizations in the USA that advocated for low- and moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, and affordable housing. But there could be just one person in your community with a video camera and a dream of humiliating your organization right out of existence – and given the opportunity, that person could upload a YouTube video that gets picked up by the media and sends you scrambling to explain yourself.

Whether its an animal shelter, or a volunteer association that supports a state park, or a community radio station, or a homeless shelter – no matter what kind of organization it is – you need to talk with staff regularly about handling various scenarios, including:

  • how fund raisers and chief executives should respond to solicitation calls and initial meetings with potential donors, especially those who seem to represent potentially large gifts
  • an email or phone call from anyone claiming to be from the press
  • vetting volunteers and job applicants
  • what staff and volunteers should not share on their blogs and social networking sites, no matter how private they may think such is
  • what conversations should never take place via email or text-based chat
  • what to do when faced with suspicious activity by a volunteer, a donor, a new staff member, someone claiming to be a film maker, etc.
  • pointed questions from someone at an open house, a public event, etc.
  • any questions that hint at the organization helping someone in an illegal way

Don’t assume senior staff, including your Executive Director, is prepared for these kinds of situations because they are in a leadership position. It doesn’t mean that person has to give up individual opinions, but they need to remember when they are “on the clock”, representing the organization to others, and they need to clarify when they are speaking as an individual and when their views do not represent the organization.

Also, don’t become a fortress. You aren’t looking to shut down staff blogs or prevent volunteers from taking photos during their service. You want to exude transparency and openness; but you also want all staff and volunteers to remember the powers of their words and actions.

We hear a lot about how great social media is; but remember that it can be used to spread misinformation and bad press as quickly as it spreads the good stuff the press likes to be breathless about.

One more thing: a lot of people are chastising the head of NPR for not saying anything when the fake donors were making disparaging, insulting remarks about Israel. Yet these critics are the same people who, when chastised for making disparaging, insulting remarks themselves about other various countries and cultures and people, will cry, “Stop telling me to be politically correct!” How many times has a politician, a community leader, a well-known person, said something in a private conversation to you, when you were meeting in relation to your work, that was sexist, racist, and otherwise inappropriate or inflammatory? Did you grin uncomfortably and try to move on, or did you say that the language made you uncomfortable? It’s happened to me too many times to count. Most of the time, indeed, I say something (surprise!), but a few times, I’ve changed the subject or found an excuse to walk away because I was too flabbergasted to say anything else. Before you reprimand a staff person for telling a beloved volunteer, “The language you are using right now about my co-worker is inappropriate and I cannot continue this conversation if you are going to continue using those terms to describe women,” or you reprimand a staff person for staying silent in a hidden camera video while a fake customer made racist comments, consider how well you’ve trained staff to handle these situations, and what YOU do in similar circumstances!

Also see how to handle online criticism, a resource for nonprofits, NGOs, government agencies and other mission-based organizations.

Another anti-volunteer union

Leave a reply

Unionized school employees in Petaluma, California, some of whom have been laid off due to budget cuts, do not like it that parent volunteers are now doing the work they were once paid to do. But even more: the union does not believe volunteers should be involved in the schools at all. Loretta Kruusmagi, president of the 350-member employees’ union bargaining unit at Petaluma Junior High School in California, said of the parents. “Our stand is you can’t have volunteers, they can’t do our work.”

On the one hand, I completely agree that the primary reason to involve volunteers should never be to save money:

But, ofcourse, on the other hand, volunteer involvement is essential for all sorts of other reasons, and I question the credibility of nonprofit organizations and government agencies focused on services to the public, like schools and state parks, that do not involve volunteers in a variety of ways, including in decision-making roles.

I believe passionately that certain positions — even the majority of positions in entire programs at some organizations — should be reserved for volunteers. The majority of programming by the Girl Scouts of the USA is delivered by volunteers. The majority of programming by the American Red Cross is delivered by volunteers. Going all-volunteer can be the right thing to do for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with money saved: It’s been true for the Pine Creek Information Center, it’s been true for the Aid Workers Network, and it’s true of lots of other organizations.

Why involve volunteers? What are the appropriate reasons?

    • Volunteer involvement allows members of the community to come into your agency, as volunteers (and, therefore, with no financial stake in the agency), to see for themselves the work your organization does.
    • Community engagement is community ownership. Volunteer involvement demostrates that the community is invested in the organization and its goals.
    • Involving volunteers — representatives of the community — helps educate the community about what the organization does.
    • Certain positions may be best done by volunteers. Volunteers can do anything. They can be counselors, advisers, theater ushers, short-term consultants, board members, projects leaders, project assistants, event coordinators, event staff, first responders, coaches, program leaders, classroom assistants, and on-and-on. Always be able to say why your agency wants volunteers, specifically, in those positions rather than paid staff (and never say it’s to save money!).
    • Involving volunteers creates support for your organization in other ways. How many volunteers are also financial donors? Have volunteers spoken at local government meetings or written letters to the editor of your local newspaper on your organization’s behalf? Are there any influential community members (elected officials?) who are former volunteers with your organization? What have volunteers done to educate friends and family about your organization and its mission?
    • Involving volunteers can be a reflection of your organization’s mission. If you are a nonprofit theater, for instance, you probably involve unpaid ushers. What have ushers experienced that is a reflection of your mission (which may be to present theater productions of that are of cultural significance for your community, or to ensure that community members of all ages and backgrounds are introduced to and educated about the place of theater in our society, etc.). If you involve volunteers as interns, how could you tie this involvement to the mission of your organization?
    • Involving volunteers can help your organization reach particular demographic groups — people of a particular age, in a particular neighborhood, of a particular economic level, etc., especially groups who might not be involved with your organization otherwise.
    • Involving volunteers can create partnerships with other organizations (nonprofits, government, business). Involving volunteers from a corporation might spur that corporation to give your agency a grant. Involving volunteers from a government office could lead to a program partnership.
    • Volunteer involvement can garner good PR (in media reports, government reports, blogs, etc.) regarding your community involvement.

There is no question that parents have the right to help out in public schools! Union president Loretta Kruusmagi is wrong, wrong, wrong to say otherwise. Just as the union of professional firefighters in the USA is wrong to “not condone” volunteer firefighters. Volunteers can, in fact, be the loudest non-Union voice in support of unions and other professionals. Since volunteers have no financial interest in the organization where they donate their service, their voice of support for professionals and their services, and their voice against budget cuts, can get the attention of the community, funders and the press.

For schools, nonprofits and others thinking volunteers are a great cost-cutting idea, see Frazzled Moms Push Back Against Volunteering.

To learn more on how to talk about the true value of volunteers, I highly recommend Susan Ellis’ outstanding book From the Top Down. The third edition has just been released.