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Finding people, organizations & topics to follow on the Fediverse

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Mastodon logo

Nonprofits, non-government organizations (NGOs), community groups, government agencies, libraries and other mission-based organizations, as well as consultants for such, should always be ready to explore a new way to connect with people. You don’t have to try out every tool, but when a certain number of colleagues or clients start talking about using something, it’s definitely time to have a look yourself. And right now, you should absolutely be exploring the Fediverse – Mastodon, specifically. I’ve said so why here.

Fedi.Tips posts hints and tips about Mastodon and the Fediverse, and I’ve found it quite helpful. This is from a recent post by FediTips on Mastodon:

There are many ways to discover interesting accounts on here. How many of these have you tried?

1. Follow hashtags
2. Join groups
3. Follow people, they share posts by others
4. Use FediFinder to discover Twitter people who are also on here
5. Browse directories
6. Follow curators
7. Browse trending posts & hashtags
8. Use StreetPass for Mastodon to discover website accounts on here
9. Hang out on Local & Federated timelines

More info on how to do all of these.

My own guidance about that first suggestion, about following hashtags: the way it’s supposed to work is that you do a search on a hashtag you want to follow, the posts that use those hashtags are supposed to come up, and then you click on the little figure with the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner to follow it. But when I did searches on terms I wanted to follow as hashtags, nothing came up. Finally, I just made a post that listed the hashtags I wanted to follow. And then after publishing I went to the post and, voilà, all my hashtags were now converted, with links – all I had to do was click on each and then click the follow button:

#volunteer
#volunteerism
#nonprofit
#NGO
#Tech4Good
#CommunityService
#a11y
#Inclusion
#MakeADifference
#history
#motorcycle
#travel
#hiking
#camping

Are you following any links on Mastodon that relate to your work or volunteering with nonprofits, government agencies, libraries or community groups? Which ones?

Personally, I’m enjoying Mastodon, just like I used to enjoy my personal Twitter account. But professionally – for connecting with colleagues, people working in similar fields, building a professional rep that leads to clients – so far, it’s been quite a dud: can’t find many people to follow, professionally-related topics aren’t happening. What about you?

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cover of Virtual Volunteering book with hands raising up various Internet connected devices

For detailed information about leveraging online tools to support and involve volunteers, whether they provide their service onsite at your organization, onsite elsewhere, or online, get yourself a copy of The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. Online platforms and social media channels come and go, but the recommendations here are timeless, and absolutely will work with social media platforms that have emerged since this book was published, like Mastodon and TikTok. You will not find a more detailed guide anywhere on this subject than than The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book.

If you have benefited from any of my blogs 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.

Social media is losing its influence for nonprofits – what to do?

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Here are comments from this article from December 2022 that every nonprofit and community group needs to consider:

This year, social media mostly stopped offering a window into the lives of our loved ones. It turns out that the social part of social media, which helped shape human behavior online and off for more than a decade, is proving to be something of a fad. It’s withering in the sad, slow way that internet habits do; eventually, the people who send public birthday messages on Facebook will be as rare as the ones who still have AOL email addresses.

In 2022, even the social media companies gave up on salvaging friend-related content. The networks rely on having enough in people’s feeds to keep them entertained during a scroll, so they can slot in ads between every few posts and make money. And there just isn’t much of that personal posting happening anymore…

The kind of service Facebook and Instagram will provide going forward is different, focused more on users’ interests than their friends…

There doesn’t seem to be a popular-enough startup waiting in the wings to connect people to their friends…

You can read the entire article here.

I find it sad for a whole range of reasons that this is happening, but for this blog’s purposes, I want to focus on how this change affects nonprofits and other community groups: this change makes it harder to reach our audiences via Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And with the demise of small newspapers (or any newspapers, for that matter) and community radio stations, we don’t have other communications avenues to fall back on.

I find myself constantly begging employees and volunteers, including board members, to “like” or comment on the social media posts of whatever nonprofit I’m trying to help, because it’s the only way we can get the content in front of more people – these nonprofits have no budget to buy higher placement on Facebook, Twitter, etc. But the reality is that it’s a very hard thing to teach and sustain among staff, regardless of their ages. Without constant reminders, it just doesn’t happen.

It’s probably why I have liked Reddit so much more than other online communities: it’s old-school Internet, where I see the posts on the groups I subscribe to, and I can control what I see so, so much more than on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. And I was astounded when I had to recruit board members for a local nonprofit and got a healthy slate of candidates mostly from posts to subreddits for cities in our county in Oregon.

What’s the answer? I think for small cities, an answer might be to revive something that was done 30 years ago:

Back in the early 1990s, long before Facebook and Twitter, and even before the World Wide Web began dominating the Internet landscape, there were different platforms that various individuals, groups and communities were using to share resources, have discussions, etc., and some city governments, like Cupertino and San Jose in California, were quick to try to harness such to create more transparency regarding information and decision-making with their constituencies. Back then, Free-nets and community networks were the rage among the small number of advocates for Internet use by everyday citizens, like Virtual Valley Community Network, a series of community bulletin boards via FirstClass and serving cities in Silicon Valley, California by San Jose-based Metro Newspapers, the most popular being Cupertino’s CityNet. I was involved in CityNet, just as a user, as well as Virtual Valley and Mac-focused online bulletin boards back in the early 1990s, when I was living in San José – I was much more excited by them than the World Wide Web, which, to me, was just a series of online brochures.

I think it’s time we revisit these online community models. I think they could feel the gap left by the way Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other platforms are changing, and the gap left by a lack of newspapers and community radio stations.

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If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, 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. 

Harms caused by persuasive technologies – what your nonprofit needs to know

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Nonprofits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), charities, government agencies, schools and other mission-based organizations, no matter what that mission is, needs to be aware of persuasive technologies and how that tech is being used to gather data and use it to target people to get them to buy or do something. You should even consider how you can educate your board, your other volunteers and your clients about persuasive tech and they can better recognize such.

This is from a recent email newsletter of the Center for Humane Technology:

We are as concerned as you are about the harms caused by persuasive technologies. A key lever in our theory of change at the Center for Humane Technology is applying pressure on technology companies by educating policy-makers. When government officials understand the harms more deeply, they can create guardrails to protect society.

On June 25, Tristan Harris, a co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology, testified on Capitol Hill in the U.S. Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing, “Optimizing for Engagement: Understanding the Use of Persuasive Technology on Internet Platforms” with Rashida Richardson (AI Now Institute), Maggie Stanphill (Google, Inc.) and Dr. Stephen Wolfram (Wolfram Research). Tristan’s opening statement argued that persuasive technology platforms have pretended to be in an equal relationship with users, while actually holding the upper hand in an asymmetric relationship. Paired with an extractive business model that is based on predicting and controlling people’s choices in the name of maximizing engagement, this inevitably causes serious harm. Algorithms like YouTube recommendations suggest increasingly extreme, outrageous videos to keep us glued to tech sites. In the hearing Tristan said, “Because YouTube wants to maximize watch time, it tilts the entire ant colony of humanity towards crazytown.” 

While many people feel they are opting in as an equal, in reality, algorithms hold asymmetric power over us — they know more about us than we know about ourselves — even predicting when we are going to quit our jobs or are pregnant. As platforms gain the upper hand over the limits of human brains and society, they cannot be allowed to have an extractive relationship but a “Duty of Care” or a “Fiduciary” relationship.

To learn more, check out CHT’s testimony, watch Tristan’s comments (17 min video) and read this Gizmodo article, “This is How You’re Being Manipulated.”

The Gizmodo article does a great job of showing that, the longer you spend in these social media ecosystems, “just scrolling”, the more machine learning systems learn about you. They build a profile of you, based on what you are looking at, what you have “liked,” what your friends have liked, etc. Think of that profile as an avatar – as, Tristan Harris, the executive director of the Center for Humane Technology, puts it, “a voodoo doll-like version of you inside of a Google server. And that avatar, based on all the clicks and likes and everything you ever made—those are like your hair clippings and toenail clippings and nail filings that make the avatar look and act more and more like you—so that inside of a Google server they can simulate more and more possibilities about ‘if I prick you with this video, if I prick you with this video, how long would you stay?’ And the business model is simply what maximized watch time…”

“Without any of your data I can predict increasing features about you using AI… All I have to do is look at your mouse movements and click patterns […] based on tweet text alone we can know your political affiliation with about 80-percent accuracy. [A] computer can calculate that you’re homosexual before you might know you’re homosexual. They can predict with 95-percent accuracy that you’re going to quit your job, according to an IBM study. They can predict that you’re pregnant.

Lawmakers weighed in on the issues as well:  

  • Sen. Schatz (D-Hawaii) “Companies are letting algorithms run wild and only using humans to clean up the mess. Algorithms are amoral. Companies designed them to optimize for engagement as their highest priority, and in doing so eliminated human judgment as part of their business model.”
  • Sen. Thune (R-South Dakota) “The powerful mechanisms behind these platforms meant to enhance engagement also have the ability, or at least the potential, to influence the thoughts and behaviors of literally billions of people.”
  • Sen. Tester (D-Montana) “I’m probably going to be dead and gone—and I’m probably thankful for it—when all this s— comes to fruition, because I think that, this scares me to death.”

So… what can you do?

  • Consider creating a workshop jointly with other agencies to educate volunteers and clients about how social media is used to gather information about them and their children, and how that technology is designed to encourage them into action and beliefs in ways they may never have realized.
  • Write your elected national representatives and tell them you believe these companies should be required, by legislation, to do a better job of talking about how they target users to keep them engaged.
  • Create a written social media policy that makes a commitment to never “like” or share any information on social media that does not fit absolutely into the mission of your organization and that cannot be verified. Know what your social media manager is doing (watch, don’t just ask). If a board member or prominent volunteer asks you to share something via the organization’s social media account that you feel does not meet that criteria, be prepared to explain to that board member why you will NOT be sharing such.
  • Create a page on a private GoogleDoc or a public web page that has a list of links to the Facebook pages you want to check in regularly regarding news and updates instead of liking those pages on Facebook (I have a private page where I have listed the Facebook pages of all of the city and county governments of my area, political groups I support, nonprofits I want to keep an eye on, sports teams I like, etc.). Any time you want to get an update, you just go to that page you’ve created and click on the link of any group or office you are interested in. Unlike every Facebook page except those you want to publicly, officially endorse by doing so. The result: you are more likely to get the updates you want from the groups you most want, because you aren’t relying on Facebook to show such in your timeline.
  • Get rid of your Facebook group for volunteers, clients, etc. Facebook data mines every post made to these groups, even if you set the account to private. Also, not everyone wants to use Facebook, because of its data-mining/profile-building and selling practices. Free alternatives include YahooGroups, Groups.io, and MeWe. Or consider making the investment for a completely private platform to create an online space for working with your volunteers or clients – my favorite is Basecamp.
  • Be flexible about how you communicate directly with volunteers and clients online and be ready to use whatever tool they seem most engaged in – and be ready to change as they change. That may mean using WhatsApp for a year or two to send direct messages to volunteers or clients and then switching to Telegram because that’s what your volunteers or clients are switching to.
  • Keep using Facebook if its proven to be a good way to get your message out and engage with others, but never use it as your only avenue for online outreach: your web site should be always up-to-date, you should post to Twitter and create content for YouTube, and you should post information, as appropriate, to online communities on other platforms, like Reddit and even Craigslist. I find places to potential new places online to post information by asking clients or volunteers where they are getting ANY information.

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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. 

UN Report on Assembly and Association in the Digital Era

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On 12 June 2019, the United Nations Special Rapporteur Clement Voule issued a report (A/HRC/41/41) on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association in the digital era. The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law has created an unofficial summary of the report here. In its introduction, ICNL notes:

As technology plays an increasingly vital role in the freedom of assembly and association, the Special Rapporteur finds that many governments are not fulfilling their obligations under international law. In fact, government measures restricting online space have become all too common. Furthermore, technology companies act as gatekeepers to people’s ability to exercise these rights, creating new issues. The report addresses these challenges, with a focus on developing guidance to preserve and expand the digital civic space.

In its summary of the Special Rapporteur’s report, ICNL notes the following regarding “digital technology companies,” and I think it’s worth highlighting in particular:

Digital technology companies, particularly social media companies, have become gatekeepers, controlling people’s ability to exercise assembly and association rights online. The role these companies play has created new risks or exacerbated challenges. The Special Rapporteur finds that these platforms’ policies and algorithms may undermine the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, despite some attempts at improvements. The Special Rapporteur is particularly concerned that social media’s content policies seem to affect those with a public profile in a disproportionate manner, placing activists and those calling for mass mobilization at risk of facing arbitrary content removal and account suspension or deactivation. Compounding this problem is social media companies’ increasing use of algorithmic systems to flag content for takedown and determine findability. In the words of the Special Rapporteur: “Algorithmic systems have the power to silence stories and movements, prevent civil society actors from reaching a wider audience, and reinforce echo chambers or reproduce bias and discrimination, to the detriment of democratic development. These measures can also have a disproportionate effect on already marginalized or at-risk groups.”

Read the full UN report (A/HRC/41/41) here.

Read the ICNL summary of the report here.

What is your social media manager doing?

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This happens a lot. Too much, in fact:

I find a Twitter account for a subject in which I am very interested. I look at who the account follows, so I can see other, related accounts on the subject. Instead, I see a long list of celebrities that whomever the social media manager follows: movie stars, athletes, bands, reality show celebrities, etc. Sometimes, I even see the account follows adult entertainment stars and highly-controversial political figures. And I wonder: how much time does this social media manager spend on Twitter doing what personally interests them rather than activities that benefit the organization?

It’s not just what you post on social media that sends a message about your organization: it’s also who you follow, what you “like”, what you retweet, etc.

The accounts that your Twitter account follows should be related to your organization’s mission or subjects your organization needs updates about, such as nonprofit financial management, corporate social responsibility, volunteer management, etc.

This isn’t to say your organization can’t follow a celebrity via its social media accounts. If a celebrity is vocal in supporting the issue that is central to your nonprofit’s mission and posts about such frequently, by all means, like that celebrity’s posts that relate to that – in fact, leverage them: reply to and retweet their messages with your own organization’s congratulations or point of view.

This isn’t to say your organization shouldn’t follow a politician: you absolutely should follow your area’s elected officials, even if you don’t agree with them, because what they do can affect your organization and clients. And again, reply to their posts, even if you disagree with them, if your message relates to what your organization tries to do as a part of its mission.

If a social media manager reports to you, you need to be supervising them! You do that by:

  • Following your organization’s account on Twitter via your own, personal Twitter account – an account you never, ever have to use to post anything at all – and reading that account regularly, certainly every week
  • Following your organization’s account on Facebook and reading the posts regularly
  • Asking how many people are coming to events or activities as a result of social media posts (and if they say they don’t know, tell them they need to start finding out)
  • Asking how many people engage with the organization’s social media (comment, ask questions, etc.), not just how many people “like” a social media post
  • Asking what the manager is doing to attract new followers on social media
  • Asking for an overview of who is following the organization on social media. People interested in attending events or obtaining services? Elected officials? Other area organizations?
  • Asking the social media manager to break down by percentage the categories posts might fall into: posts that are about marketing activities, posts that are about attracting donors, posts that are about promoting the organization’s accomplishments, posts meant to educate regarding the organization’s cause, etc. If 50% of posts are asking for money, should this be reduced, and the number of posts about accomplishments be increased?
  • Asking the manager how he or she engages with other accounts on their feeds: what posts are they “liking” or commenting on, and have those interactions lead to anything – new followers, questions, criticisms, etc.

On a related note: please put the FULL name of your organization in your Twitter description, not your mission statement! I don’t want the only way to find you on Twitter to be to look on your web site – most people just give up rather than trying to hunt you down.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into developing material, researching information, preparing articles, updating pages, etc., here is how you can help.

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Your initiative should leverage UN days

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International days, weeks, years and decades, as designated by the United Nations General Assembly, offer excellent outreach opportunities for nonprofit organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society organizations, charities, government initiatives and other agencies focused on improving and enriching communities and individuals, as well as protecting the environment. There is a commemorative day, as designated by the United Nations general assembly, for just about any subject you can think of. Here’s just a sample:

Cancer
Female Genital Mutilation
Women and Girls in Science
the power of radio 
Social Justice 
Wildlife
Women
Racial Discrimination
Poetry
Down Syndrome
Forests
Water		 Meteorology
Tuberculosis
Autism
Mine Awareness
Sport for Development and Peace
Reflection on the Genocide in Rwanda
Health
Human Space Flight
Malaria
Tourism
Mountains
Migrants

and on and on and on. Now is a great time to look through the list and think about how you are going to leverage these days for your initiative’s mission.

You can use these designations to tie in your organization’s events and programs, through

  • issuing press releases about your work and how it relates to the day, week or year
  • posting social media messages that relate to the day, week or year’s theme
  • writing op-ed pieces for local media
  • blogging on a related topic, posting social
  • offering yourself for interviews to radio and TV
  • holding a special event that ties in with the day, week or year

If you mention these days, weeks, years, etc. on your blog and web site, and use the official Twitter tags for the events, you increase the chance of your organization coming to the attention of anyone doing a search online for information about these days, weeks, etc. and reaching an even wider audience.

For a list of these UN days, weeks, years and decades, see either this part of the UNESCO web site or this page by the UN Association of Canada. HOWEVER, note that, as of the start of December 2017, these calendars have not been updated with the 2018 designation. It’s not known of the UN will designate 2018 with any theme. The General Assembly has declared 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages.

The UN Decade of Action on Nutrition is 2016 to 2025, which means it’s still happening in 2018. The designation aims to trigger intensified action to end hunger and eradicate malnutrition worldwide, and ensure universal access to healthier and more sustainable diets for all people.

The International Decade for People of African Descent is 2015–2024, which means it’s also still being celebrated in 2018, as is the United Nations Decade of Sustainable Energy for All, which is 2014–2024.

The decade of 2011–2020, also all still being celebrated, has four designations:

There’s also the International Decade for the Rapprochement of Cultures (2013-2022), which is designated by UNESCO, a UN initiative, but not the General Assembly. Rapprochement means reconciliation, increased understanding, restoration of harmony, agreement, cooperation or harmonization. The decade is meant to promote mutual understanding and reciprocal knowledge of cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity, and to foster dialogue for sustainable development and its ethical, social and cultural dimensions. The initiative offers a number of free resources you can use to promote the themes of the decade.

Also see:

schedule social media posts? use with caution

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I’ve been using social media before it was called social media: I was a heavy user of USENET newsgroups back in the 1990s, and moderated the soc.org.nonprofit group for a few years. USENET was all about interaction with others and networking – but in text-based formats. As a result of that experience, I learned early so, so much about using the Internet both for promotions and for engagement: it gave me terrific grounding for using modern social media tools (and least I think so). As a one-person shop with no permanent agency affiliation, no best selling book and no big media splash, I’ve done pretty well at attracting followers on both Twitter and Facebook.

I use tools like Hootsuite to pre-program tweets to Twitter and status updates to Facebook and GooglePlus, but I don’t overly-rely on those tools: I still take at least a couple of hours every week to scroll through those I follow on Twitter and to read updates, to retweet things, to reply to posts, etc. I also pick one of my Twitter lists every week to read through and do the same. I wish it was as easy to do that on Facebook, but that’s another blog…

That said, I do use Hootsuite to pre-program tweets and Facebook page posts. I do this days, weeks, even months in advance. And I’ve been doing something in the last several weeks that seems to attract a lot more likes, followers and interactions for me: choosing my own social media theme for a day, and programming posts, especially tweets, once an hour around that theme, for 4-5 hours on that one day.

Creating tweets and other social media messages around a theme for the day doesn’t require me to create new information: I choose themes based on pages on my web site and posts on my blog that I would love for people to visit or revisit. Some days, I tweet about the same web page or blog post four times, but always with different keywords and a different description.

Some of the day-long themes I’ve tweeted around:

  • ethics in international volunteering
  • how to get a job in or experience for a job in humanitarian aid and development
  • controversies regarding not paying interns
  • using Twitter
  • ethics in communications
  • safety in volunteer programs
  • resources regarding volunteer firefighters
  • virtual volunteering
  • competing online with breaking news
  • welcoming volunteers (and how you might be making them unwelcome)
  • digital/IT-related volunteering
  • conflict, free speech, reconciliation
  • social cohesion, building understanding

Your nonprofit, non-governmental organization, school, government agency or other mission-based initiative can do the same: look through your web pages that are focused on educating people about your cause or mission or reaching clients and potential clients in particular. Do you see themes emerging? What about UN international days that relate to the mission of your initiative – could you build a day-of-social-media-messaging around that theme?

On a related note, if you have an event, or an approaching program deadline, or some other time-sensitive information or announcement, don’t rely on just one tweet or one Facebook post to get the word out. You need to come up with reasons to post multiple times on Twitter, even in just one day, about a key event: each post could feature a different photo, a different keyword, and slightly different wording.

Oh, but doesn’t that mean followers keep reading the same message over and over? No. That’s because most people aren’t sitting and looking at one Facebook page or one Twitter feed all day long. I’m very lucky if one of my followers just happens to be looking at Twitter when I post – it’s very likely most WON’T be. For my followers to see a message, they either have to be staring at the screen the moment I post, to go specifically to my Facebook page or Twitter feed to read only my social media posts, to see the message when it’s reposted by someone else, or when it uses a keyword tag that they follow.

The only way scheduling messages for later posting to social media works, however, is if it’s coupled with live, in-the-moment interactions on social media: liking other people and agency’s content, responding to that content, asking questions regarding other people’s posts, etc. If I don’t show interest in the social media posts of others, why should they show interests in mind?

And whatever you do, do NOT use Twitter only as a gateway for your Facebook posts. No one is going to click on that truncated message on Twitter to read the rest of it on Facebook. It shows a profound laziness on your part.

Essential digital networking skills of the modern nonprofit worker

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angryjayneNo matter your role at a nonprofit or other mission-based organization – marketing, management of volunteers, directing a program, accounting, human resources (paid staff) management – you must have a solid understanding of certain digital skills, skills that go beyond how to use database software, to be able to do that job well.

Every job at a mission-based organization – nonprofit, NGO, charity, school, government agency, etc. – requires being able to efficiently process large amounts of information from a variety of resources, being able to respond to people quickly with accurate information, being able to work with a variety of different people via online tools, being up-to-date on developments that can affect that job and knowing about emerging innovative practices. Going to conferences and reading magazines and paper newsletters are great to build your knowledge, onsite classes are great to build your skills – but just going to such events and reading only print information isn’t enough anymore to continuously build your skills and knowledge. And conferences and onsite classes are often out-of-reach, financially, for many nonprofit workers.

The good news is that digital skills are easy to acquire, and are much more about being an effective communicator with humans than having a computer science degree or being a programmer.

At minimum, the modern nonprofit worker, regardless of his or her role – human resources management, program assistance, marketing, whatever –  should:

  • Respond to email quickly
  • Manage email well, to the point that he or she can quickly find a particular email from a particular person from a particular time period
  • Be able to communicate effectively via email, including in situations addressing conflict or talking with someone for whom English is not his or her first language
  • Be a veteran of participating in online presentations and know what makes an effective online presentation
  • Have taken and finished at least one online course that took longer than two hours to finish.
  • Know how to work remotely, not just writing and responding via email, but participating in phone conferences and checking in regularly
  • Be able to effectively facilitate a phone or online meeting
  • Know how to use Twitter or Facebook or whatever comes next to connect with essential information for his or her job (experts in his or her field, legislation that could affect his or her work, etc.) – that doesn’t mean he or she needs to be a social media outreach expert, just that they know how to use social networking to NETWORK as a part of his or her job. And that means more than just posting information; it means knowing how to engage with others.
  • Know how to look for social media keyword tags that might relate to his or her work in some way
  • Know how to upload, or download, photos to Flickr, or a similar online platform
  • Know how to reduce the size of a photo (so that it can be included in an email newsletter, attached to email, etc.)
  • Know how to recognize misinformation online and be committed to being truthful online
  • Not be afraid to try new technologies more than once

In addition, senior staff at any mission-based organization should know how to work with online volunteers and understand the basics of virtual volunteering; even if all your volunteers are “traditional”, you need to explore virtual volunteering.

Yes, it would be great if you understood Instagram and Snapchat and whatever else intensive, shiny social media tool comes down the lane, especially those that are used exclusively or primarily by phones and tablets – but unless you are a marketing director or manager of volunteers, those are just nice to know, but not absolutely necessary.

Put it into your official work plan to get up-to-speed on essential digital networking skills – practice will get you where you need to be!

Also see:

14 (was 13) things you do to annoy me on social media

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handstopMore than a dozen things that annoy me regarding the use of social media by too many nonprofits, government initiatives and other mission-based programs:

1) You don’t post at least one item a week to your Facebook page.

2) You have created a gateway where everything you post to Facebook goes out on your Twitter feed. Never mind that every message ends up being truncated on Twitter, so that Twitter users see things like this: Join our staff, donors, participants, volunteers & allies as we march on Saturday to support the vital issue in our community regarding… with a link for more information. Most people will NOT click on that link to find out what in the heck you are talking about!

3) You don’t list every public event by your organization on the events function on Facebook, so that people can mark “interested” or “attending” and, therefore, receive automatic reminders of the event as the date approaches, or get an idea of who else is interested or who is attending. It also makes it easier for others to share those event details with others via Facebook.

4) You don’t have your organization’s full name in your Twitter profile. That means, if anyone wants to tag your organization in a tweet or wants to follow you, it will be difficult to find you, and they may even use the wrong Twitter handle, driving traffic to someone else instead of you.

5) You post only “one way” messages to Twitter and Facebook, rather than posts that encourage engagement, like questions, or posts that say “Tell us what you think about…”

6) On Twitter, you don’t participate in Tweetchats, you don’t respond to other organization’s tweets, you don’t retweet other organization’s messages – you don’t ENGAGE.

7) On Facebook, you don’t “like” or comment on the status updates of other organizations. You want them to do that for you, but you don’t do the same for them.

8) On Facebook, you don’t reply to or even “like” comments made on your status update. That means no one ever knows if you care that they’ve provided feedback on your activities.

9) You don’t thank people that share your Tweets or Facebook status updates.

10) On Twitter, you don’t spend any time reading tweets by others – you just tweet your own messages. That’s like going to a conference, shoving your brochure into people’s hands and walking away, never listening to them, never meeting anyone, never attending workshops.

11) You post far more messages encouraging donations than you post about accomplishments by your organization, things your volunteers have been up to,

12) You work with teens but don’t use Instagram.

13) You don’t experiment with GooglePlus or YouTube or Snap Chat, because you couldn’t figure out the value a year or two ago.

14) You have something awesome in your email newsletter and I want to share just that item via Facebook, but it’s not on your Facebook feed nor your Web site (except as maybe in a PDF version of your newsletter, which no one reads online) Feb. 22, 2017 addition

If you changed your ways regarding social media:

  • your donors and volunteers would feel more strongly about supporting you,
  • your donors would be more motivated to continue giving and volunteers would feel more motivated to complete assignments and take on more,
  • the media would be more inclined to contact you regarding a story or for your comment on current events,
  • you are more likely to attract new donors and volunteers,
  • your staff would become even better versed in talking about their work,
  • other organizations would be more inclined to refer others to you, to collaborate with you and to rely on you

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Facebook use to organize Women’s Marches: lessons learned

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womensmarchThe women’s marches on Saturday, January 21, 2017, may have been the largest single day of marches in US history. Somewhere between 3.3 million and 4.6 million marched in cities across the USA, according to political scientists from the Universities of Connecticut and Denver, who are compiling a mammoth spreadsheet listing turnouts, from the roughly half a million that demonstrated in Washington to the single protester who picketed Show Low, Arizona. There were also marches around the world.

Facebook was an essential tool in organizing women’s marches all over the USA. Most everyone I know personally who was a part of a march got their information from a Facebook group set up specifically for their city’s demonstration.

I joined two of the online groups, for Portland, Oregon and for Washington, DC, and it was fascinating to watch how the groups were used. Some things I learned observing the online organizing:

  1. March organizers realized that they needed a web site or public google doc associated with the group, because group discussions quickly became unwieldy – there needed to a place to find all of the essential information, without having to scroll through what seemed an endless stream of Facebook group messages. It also mean that people that were not on Facebook could access the basic information.
  2. Constant facilitation and moderation were essential. FAQs are great and absolutely necessary, but there will always be people that don’t read them and ask the same questions over and over. Also, a quick, even immediate, response to rumors and misinformation was essential, and it took more than just one post to counter such.
  3. Rumors and misinformation were posted *regularly*. There were people posting that march permits were denied, that the marches were canceled, that the starting point had changed, that bus parking was being denied, that mass transit was going to be canceled that day, and on and on. Not sure if it was people just thinking/wondering out loud (many posts began with “I heard from someone that…”), if it was individuals trying deliberately to disrupt, or if it was people part of an organized effort to disrupt.
  4. Constant updates, often several times a day, were essential, particularly in showing response to criticism and questions.
  5. Facebook created a written record of the behavior of organizers. If they made a misstep, it was there for all to see. If they did things right, it was there for all to see. It was forced transparency for organizers.
  6. Deletion of critical comments was often NOT a good strategy. In November, Portland, Oregon March group moderators began deleting comments, even entire threads of conversation, that they deemed as critical of the march, such as those by people that felt the march was too focused on the experiences of white women, and did not address the unique challenges and perspectives of other women. Many people didn’t just want inclusiveness; they wanted specific statements regarding the particular challenges of black women, Latino women, Asian women, and transgendered people. Deleting those criticisms made people angrier. At one point, major allies such as Planned Parenthood and the NAACP Portland chapter decided they wouldn’t participate. Constance Van Flandern, an artist and activist in Eugene who was the Oregon’s official liaison to the national Women’s March on Washington, said in this article, “These women were overwhelmed by people coming to their Facebook page and asking about issues of diversity. It was just delete, delete, delete.” So Van Flandern started a new Facebook group for the march and invited nine women who had been complaining to her about the lack of inclusion on the other page to join. The page quickly replaced what had been the official page, and the march was saved – in fact, at 100,000, it was the largest march in Portland’s history.
  7. These marches weren’t at the initiative of paid staff at large organizations; they were started at the grassroots level, and powered by independent, spontaneous volunteers, who took on high responsibility roles and recruited and managed other volunteers, mostly through Facebook. And by all accounts, they managed brilliantly – not perfectly, but show me an event managed perfectly by paid staff! I also think their organization and popularity caught a lot of traditional women-focused organizations off guard, and they had to play catch-up. Often, grassroots folks are far ahead of traditional groups in taking a stand – and I think this is going to happen more because Facebook makes it so easy for any group to start getting its message out.
  8. Facebook played a significant role in getting the word out about these marches. But the reason these marches were so well attended, far exceeding predictions in terms of crowd size all over the USA, including DC and Portland, wasn’t just because people knew about the marches. I hope people don’t start thinking all they need is a Facebook group to get lots of people to attend a march.

What lessons did you learn in watching Facebook be used as the primary organizing tool for the women’s marches? Share in the comments below.

January 30, 2017 update: New York Times article, The Alt-Majority: How Social Networks Empowered Mass Protests Against Trump.

vvbooklittle The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, by Susan J. Ellis and myself, is our attempt to document the best practices over the more than three decades virtual volunteering has been happening, in a comprehensive, detailed way, so that the collective knowledge can be used with the latest digital engagement initiatives to help people volunteer, advocate for causes they care about, connect with communities and make a difference. It’s a tool primarily for organizations, but there’s also information for online volunteers themselves. It’s available both in traditional print form and in digital version. Bonus points if you can find the sci fi/fan girl references in the book…

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