Tag Archives: networking

Nonprofits & NGOs: Get to Know a University

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Nonprofits and non-governmental organizations (NGOs):

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

For instance,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Look what partnerships with universities can lead to:

Western Kentucky University Entrepreneurship students working to revitalize downtown businesses

Use the LinkedIn Events Function!

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A followup to my recent blog about using Facebook to promote events.

Your nonprofit organization, non-governmental organization (NGO), school, government agency or other mission-based program is missing another BIG outreach opportunity for its events if you are not also listing your public events on LinkedIn as well as Facebook.

If your organization is hosting a conference, an open house, a class, a volunteer orientation or other public event, these need to be listed on LinkedIn. Unlike Facebook, which is a social networking site, LinkedIn is a professional networking site: people are linked by their connections through work or volunteering – and that means you reach people with particular skill sets or professional associations when an employee, volunteer, conference attendee, etc. notes his or her attendance to your event on LinkedIn.

Your employees should feel quite comfortable noting their attendance to your organization’s events, since the activity is a part of their job rather than their social life. Volunteers should also be encouraged to acknowledge their attendance via LinkedIn to events you have posted there. 

Make it clear if RSVPing via LinkedIn is or is NOT the official way to RSVP; attendees may still have to RSVP through traditional channels (filling out an online form on your web site, calling the organization, paying a registration fee, etc.). Also make it clear how public the event is; if someone needs to already be a volunteer that has gone through an orientation, or a registered student, or a registered conference attendee, note that on the LinkedIn posting.

This is all easy to do – and it’s a great online volunteering assignment: an online volunteer can input all of this month’s, or this year’s, information for you. The only requirement for you is that you provide that volunteer very detailed information about your events, and you review the information after the volunteer has uploaded it, to ensure the information is correct.

When I’m going to attend a conference, or present a workshop, I really like showing that attendance on LinkedIn – it’s a way to show how busy I am, what I’m doing, etc., as well as to encourage professional and volunteer colleagues to attend as well. Often, I have to create the event myself, because no one from the organization has listed it already. What a missed opportunity for these organizations! So, just as I said regarding using Facebook to publicize events: get busy! And keep your info up-to-date!

The Internet hasn’t changed. Not really.

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The Internet hasn’t changed much since its invention more than 30 years ago. Not really.

Oh, fine, wave your arms and jump up and down and say, “No! No! It’s now interactive. It’s now social. Now people crowdsource problems.” It’s cute when you do that.

But the Internet has always been interactive. It’s always been social. And it’s always been about crowdsourcing. It’s why I fell in love with it, via USENET newsgroups, back in the 1990s.

What has changed about the Internet over the last 30 years? It has a lot more graphical interafaces, and there are many, many more people are using it. That’s it.

Consider the Cluetrain Manifesto, published in 1999 and which immediately became my guide for thinking about the Internet: the authors asserted back then that the Internet is unlike traditional media used in mass marketing / one-to-many marketing, and transforms business practices radically:

A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed.

Even the Atlantic Monthly believes the Internet hasn’t changed much in 15 years. It spotlighted a high-school handout from 1996 explaining the advantages and disadvantages of using the newfangled Internet everybody was talking about – and it sounds exactly like what people say today.

I started using the Internet in 1994, when a colleague printed out Munn Heydorn’s guide to nonprofit organizations on the Internet. Even in 1994, it was a document of many, many pages. She suggested I explore some of the resources recommended, as she was too busy to do such (and was only interested in emailing her college friends). Somehow, soc.org.nonprofit jumped out at me most in that long list of resources, and I joined as soon as I could figure out how to do so. The World Wide Web seemed so boring to me then — it was just online brochures — whereas USENET was interactive, and its newsgroups felt like communities. As email groups via ListServ and Majordomo proliferated, and then along with YahooGroups, nonprofits on the Internet flourished.

Sure, there were nonprofits then – and for-profit businesses, for that matter – who used their new web site as an online brochure, and email as one-way communication with customers and constituents. In fact, there are a lot of companies still doing this. But these have never been the norm when it comes to Internet use.

So let’s stop talking about the Internet as something new and, instead, start looking to what’s worked, and what hasn’t, over the many years. There are some fantastic case studies from the 1990s – even the 1980s – about virtual volunteering, online mentoring, crowd-sourcing and microvolunteering via newsgroups, and so much more – that are still relevant today. Mistakes that were made in those early days of networking tech are being made again as the Internet gets rebranded as the Cloud and online social networking, as episodic online volunteering gets rebranded as microvolunteering, and as people are starting nonprofits or social enterprises to do with Facebook or Twitter what many nonprofits were doing with USENET back in the 1980s. Let’s learn from those mistakes instead of repeating them!

Also see The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted.

Recruiting board members with LinkedIn?

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On LinkedIn, in the Answers section for nonprofits, someone asked:

How can a non-profit recruit board members through LinkedIn?

Recruiting board members successfully comes from a lot of ongoing cultivation. Using LinkedIn or any other online networking tool to recruit board members has to be a part of a comprehensive, ongoing strategy that involves a lot of different activities, IMO.

It not only doesn’t work to just post somewhere and say, “Hey, we need some board members!”, it also makes it sound like you don’t treat board membership seriously.

The following suggested activities to recruit board members will show that you are a competent, credible, transparent organization, and will give candidates an idea of how seriously you take your organization’s work and how well you support your board members. It also shows you aren’t looking for just anyone. Board membership is an honor, a leadership volunteering opportunity, and should be treated as such in your recruitment!

Start with your web site:

  • Have a full description of what board members do, what weekly or monthly time requirements a board member is committing to (onsite meetings once a month? online meetings once a week?) and for how long (a year? two years?), if attendance to a certain number of meetings is mandatory (IMO, you should always have such a requirement if you want board members to take attenance seriously), if board members are expected to give or raise a certain amount of money each year (you don’t need to say how much on your web site; you can leave that to an interview later), etc.
  • Note on your web site how many board members you are looking for. Two? Three to six?
  • Have photos of your board in action, and a list of all current board members with short bios about each – not just what companies and constiuencies they represent, but also, a personal statement from each about why they volunteer for your organization, why they think such is important, etc.
  • Have complete details on how someone could nominate themselves as a board member, or how they could suggest someone for possible nomination. Make this process super easy.

This information on your organization’s web site is not an afterthought. They are super-important steps that they show how much your organizaton values board members. This information will wow a potential candidate. It will also screen out people who don’t understand the very real commitment of board membership.

Then talk to your current board and map exactly what will happen when a nomination comes in:

  • What research will be done on a candidate, and who will do that research? How and when will a candidate be interviewed, and who will do that interview?
  • What questions will be asked in that interview?
  • What will be the reasons to turn a nominee away, and how will this rejection be communicated?
  • If you turn away a board member, will you encourage that person to volunteer in other ways? (advisory board? volunteer project leader? special events volunteer?)

And once you have done all of these steps, you are ready to:

  • post this leadership volunteering opportunity (that’s what board membership is!) to BoardNetUSA, VolunteerMatch, etc., pointing back to your web site with complete details about what board membership really looks like
  • post something about the opportunity on your own, individual LinkedIn status update for your network (you may want to do this more than once)
  • ask each of your existing board members to do the same on their status updates on LinkedIn, to reach their network
    if it’s appropriate 
  • ask all of your volunteers to post about the opportunity to their LinkedIn status updates as well, if they feel comfortable doing such
  • do the same on Facebook, if it’s appropriate – but note that Facebook is a social networking site, and many people don’t like mixing their business or volunteering with their social activities.

If you have a Come learn about our organization event/open house, list it on the events function of LinkedIn as well, and make sure all staff, board members and other volunteers that will attend RSVP on LinkedIn, so that all of their connections see the attendance, and ask all board members and staff to mention the event in their status updates as well.

Also, look for LinkedIn groups that are regionally-focused on your geographic area; these can be focused on business, on a particular issue, on on someone else’s group, etc. Some of these LinkedIn groups may be appropriate for posting about your board opportunities (most won’t be, but it’s worth it to look). You can also troll those groups and look for people that you think would be great board members based on the quality and content of their posts, and the ask your board member, your staff, your other volunteers and your own professional network if anyone knows a person you’ve identified as a potential candidate and if anyone in your network would be willing to make the initial invitation to an open house or event so that person can get to know your organization.

After three-six months, evaluate your efforts. How many inquiries did you receive? How many formal nominations did you receive? How many new board members have joined or are in process? If people dropped out of the process after expressing interest or being nominated, why did they? If people were rejected, why were they rejected? In answering these questions, you will know what adjustments you need to make in your board recruitment – on LinkedIn and otherwise!

And one final thought: what a great volunteering opportunity it would be for someone to be in charge of this board recruitment process! You could recruit a volunteer just to do all of the above for six months. Designate one staff member to be the primary contact and support person for such a volunteer, and start recruiting just for this position first! There are so many university students studying nonprofit management, business management, HR management, or any number of other subjects, as well as people who are job-hunting, who would love to be able to put on their résumé: instituted and managed a successfully recruitment campaign for such-and-such organization, resulting in three new board members.

Incredibly sad news re: Gary Chapman, Internet pioneer

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Gary Chapman, a senior lecturer at the University of Texas’ Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs who was an expert in the field of Internet and technology policy, died Tuesday of an apparent heart attack while on a kayaking trip in Guatemala.

Gary was the director of the LBJ School’s 21st Century Project. He also was a prolific writer, authoring articles on technology and society for publications that include The New York Times and The Washington Post, and was a general editorial columnist for the Austin American-Statesman.

I am having such a hard time writing the word was about Gary. Gary was my friend. In my opinion, Gary never got his due regarding his pioneering contributions to the study of the Internet and the development of our understanding for the Internet’s potential to communicate and engage. All those hip things we say now about the benefits of online social networking and cloud computing and whatever else is in vogue to say now, Gary was saying many years ago about the potential of the Internet.

My former boss, Dr. Sarah Jane Rehnborg, broke the news to me just now, and among the many things she said was this: He was absolutely one of my favorite people here at LBJ. I so understand that sentiment. Gary was my immediate friend and colleague when I moved to Austin — he made me feel immediately welcomed. I could not count how many people I’ve referred to him in some way, and how many people and resources he has sent my way. He was a huge supporter of my work regarding online volunteering. I just reconnected with him a few months ago, and I remember thinking, Gary’s Facebook posts are always worth reading.

From what I understand, Gary was on a dream vacation. He had been taking kayaking lessons from a champion kayaker in preparation for this trip.

I am guessing that the LBJ School web site will have information on funeral arrangements and suggestions for expressions of sympathy in terms of donations. I can’t get on the web site right now.

Shocking, sad news…. many tears to shed…

 

A war on nonprofits & NGOs?

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The Fall 2010 election in the USA should have every nonprofit’s attention, as well as the attention of every NGO’ abroad that receives money from the USA in some way, directly or indirectly. Government budgets have already been cut severely, and these cuts will become even more severe over the coming months — and the irony is that the same local, state and national governments cutting nonprofit budgets are also asking nonprofits to maintain their services in the face of these cuts.

In addition to the budget cuts, there is also a significant backlash in the USA, and in some cases, abroad, against nonprofits and NGOs; there is growing rhetoric against the work of mission-based organizations, which are being accused of everything from promoting inappropriate agendas to being corrupt.

Your organization needs to get up to speed on what could be called the war on nonprofits and NGOs:

Your organization needs to develop a strategy that employs a variety of activities over the next year to ensure local officials, state legislatures, and US Congressional representatives, as well as political leaders that are not office holders, understand just how vital your organization is and just how well managed and efficient it is. This isn’t something nice to do; it’s absolutely necessary to your organization’s survival.

There are several things your organization can do:

  • Build a relationship with elected officials, politicans and pundits:
  • Ensure that office holders, representatives from local political parties and various media representatives receive press releases regarding your organization’s results and the difference your organization makes. This can be evaluation results and testimonials from clients or volunteers.
  • Invite office holders, representatives from local political parties and media representatives (radio, TV, newspapers and bloggers) to events where they will hear about the difference your organization makes, or to observe your organization “in action.” Thank office holders, politicans, media representatives and others for attending your event with a personalized followup letter or email.
  • Set up meetings with elected officials, politicans, media representatives and others, one-on-one. It can be a morning meeting at their office, a lunch, whatever. Try to know them on a personal level.
  • Respond to criticism and rhetoric from elected officials, politicans and pundits. Respond with a phone call, a request for a meeting, a letter, an email, a newspaper editorial and/or a blog. Responding to criticism is vital both in countering negative PR and in showing office holders, politicans, pundits and others that you are listening!
  • Post your annual reports for the last five years online. Give an idea of why things cost what they do. Spell out administrative costs — what does having a copy machine allow you to do that you could not otherwise? How does having computers and Internet access allow you to serve more clients? Why do you rent or own office spaces, meeting spaces, event spaces, etc.?
  • Post information about your paid staff and their credentials online. Show that the staff you are paying are worth their salaries.
  • Talk in your newsletter and blog about what a cut in the budget will look like, what programs would have to be eliminated, what services you would not be able to provide, etc. Don’t sound desperate but do be clear about why decisions are being made and what cuts will look like.
  • Talk in your newsletter and blog in blunt terms about expenses. For instance, involving volunteers is NOT free; talk about all the costs that come from involving volunteers, your commitment to involving volunteers as something much more than free labor, etc.

You cannot afford not to do this!

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