Tag Archives: outreach

Adopt a dog. And Don’t Just Ask for Money.

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Lucy next to my blueberry bush
This is Lucinda. We adopted her in December of last year. She’s just 18 months – a lean greyhoundish brindle at 40 pounds or so.

One of the joys of working from home: my pre-work morning has been spent watching Harry, a little 10-year-old dog that I’m dog-sitting for a few days for a friend – he’s not even 20 pounds – playing with Lucinda, and it’s been absolutely hilarious. I love my still-a-puppy for adjusting her play for a smaller, slower dog, and I love Harry for being oh-so feisty. And I wonder yet again why more people don’t adopt older dogs.

Lucy is my first puppy – I got her at seven-months old. But she’s my fourth dog. My first dog, Buster, was probably two when I adopted him off the streets of a town in Massachusetts, my second dog, Wiley, was almost six and been shuffled around and neglected in three homes before me, and my third dog, Albi, was almost seven, rescued from the streets of a small town in Hungary. Adopting those older dogs was actually much easier in many respects than adopting a puppy: they were already house-trained, they were grateful for absolutely every milligram of love that came their way, and they had personalities that had allowed them to survive all those years before. They were each groovy, and happy to learn new tricks. I’ll never forget when my second dog, Wiley, had to go to another room with a vet without me, and he started to cry – big loud wails – because he didn’t want to leave me. And the vet said, “Wow, I haven’t seen a dog this bonded to an owner in a while.” And I thought, yeah, there’s that whole older-dogs-can’t-bond-with-new-families myth going down in flames.

Families with children that are concerned about introducing a new dog should really look into adopting an older dog. So many rescue groups know the personalities of the dogs in their care – do they like children? do they like other dogs? do they get along with cats? do they enjoy long walks or just need a few short ones? do you want a dog that’s quiet and sleeps a lot or that’s really active and needs play time every day? – and can match you with an older dog that would be perfect for your particular family and home. The big pet stores now have dogs from these rescue groups for adoption – they don’t use puppy mills anymore – and the volunteers there will be happy to answer your questions.

And with all that said… I’m really disappointed in the ASPCA TV advertisements. They never encourage you to adopt a pet from a shelter, they never encourage you to get your pet spayed or neutered – they only ask that you give them money. Just as volunteer engagement shouldn’t be only about getting work done (it should be about cause awareness-building, building trust in the community, etc.), TV advertisements for nonprofits shouldn’t be only about “give us money.”

Also see: Don’t just ask for money

Volunteers can help you reach more people on Facebook

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Most nonprofits, NGOs, government agencies and other mission-based organizations have taken a big hit regarding their social media outreach because of changes to Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm. These changes greatly affect how many people see a status update on a Facebook page that isn’t sponsored through paid advertising. That means that, even if people have “liked” your organization’s Facebook page, they won’t see most of what you post, because of how Facebook has newsfeeds configured now. According to the International Business Times, the reach for many Facebook pages posts was at about 16 percent, but over the last few months it’s down to 2 percent or less. Facebook is a for-profit company – they want you to pay for people to see your organization’s Facebook page posts.

I’ve read some comments from nonprofit managers that say they will stop updating their organization’s Facebook pages as a result. But Facebook is a primary communication method for oh-so-many people – to stop updating your organization’s page means you are cutting yourself off from current and potential volunteers, donors, clients, and other people who care about your mission.

In How a Few Tiny Horses Bucked the Facebook Algorithm, the nonprofit TechSoup does a great job of talking about what your nonprofit can do to greatly increase the number of people that see your Facebook page updates, and TechSoup profiles a small nonprofit that’s done it all with great success. I won’t repeat their recommendations here – but I will make an additional suggestion: involve volunteers in your efforts.

The TechSoup article talks about how much sharing images can increase your organization’s Facebook page reach. I can immediately hear so many people saying, “We don’t have any photos to share.” YES YOU DO. Or you should. Are volunteers taking photos during their service time and sharing those photos with you? You need to be encouraging volunteers to do this! And another volunteer can maintain the archive of these submissions, make sure photos have keywords so that they can easily be searched, etc., if your marketing staff has no time.

I hear someone saying, “We’re a domestic violence shelter. We can’t do this!” Yes, you can: a photo of a massive amount of dirty dishes in the sink, with the description, “Tonight, we fed more than 20 people staying at our shelter this evening.” A photo of hands holding each other, with a description about how your shelter is there to help. A photo of a group from the knees down. A photo of your Executive Director. A photo of artwork created by children at your shelter. I came up with that list in two minutes (I timed it). Imagine the ideas your volunteers could come up with that would allow photos that show impact or reflect your mission, but completely protect the identity of those you serve and of your volunteers.

The TechSoup article also talks about leveraging holidays, pop culture events, memes, “or even just plain old Friday. International days as designated by the United Nations is another good source for leveraging events or themes by others to generate content for your own Facebook page – these often come with ready-to-use logos, photos and keyword tags. Many of these posts that can be created days, weeks, even months in advance, and scheduled in advance to be posted by a tool like Hootsuite. This is another place that volunteers can be a huge help – most nonprofit marketing staff will tell you they don’t have time to leverage holidays, memes, UN days, etc. – so why not welcome volunteers to submit ideas? The marketing staff can still have final say on what will be posted, of course.

And, of course, ask your volunteers regularly to like your Facebook page status updates, to comment upon them, and to share them – this all leads to your page getting more viewers!

Involving volunteers in social media is, of course, yet another example of virtual volunteering!

Facebook’s days as a primary online communications tool are numbered, of course. It’s already been abandoned by millions of teens. Just as the dominant online tools America Online and MySpace ultimately fell out of favor with most users, so too will Facebook. But, for now, it’s worth sticking with.

Marketing staff: either help promote volunteer engagement or GET OUT OF THE WAY

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logoMy blog today is actually for public relations and marketing staff at nonprofits, rather than those managers of volunteer programs. And my message is this: either help promote your organization’s volunteer engagement OR GET OUT OF THE WAY. I talk to people managing their organization’s volunteer engagement activities – recruiting volunteers, supporting those volunteers, creating the majority of opportunities for those volunteers, helping other staff engage with those volunteers in their work, etc. – and among the many complaints I hear about challenges to their success is this one: the public relations and marketing staff won’t support me. Those leading volunteer engagement at your organization need a variety of support from marketing and public relations staff:
  • in using the organization’s Facebook page, blog, web site and other online activities to recruit volunteers and tout the accomplishments of such
  • in reaching out to the media about what volunteers are doing
  • in connecting media to those working with volunteers at the organization when the media says they want to do a story about volunteerism
  • in understanding when volunteers are doing something particularly special or innovative, or staff working with such are, such that it would be worthy of external attention (or internal attention, for that matter)
  • in including information about the organization’s volunteer engagement in all traditional publications, including paper newsletters and annual reports
  • in talking about volunteer engagement as more than just the monetary value of volunteer hours
Yet, I hear from staff again and again that the outreach staff won’t create a link on the home page to information on volunteering (though they will regarding donating money, no problem!), that they won’t include any volunteer-related messages on Facebook, that they won’t use any photos from a recent volunteer engagement event in outreach materials, and that they will include information about volunteerism in the annual report only regarding the monetary value of the volunteer time given. Public relations and marketing staff: if you are not going to create a detailed strategy for supporting your organization’s engagement of volunteers through all of your various outreach methods, then let the manager of that engagement do it him or herself, and stay out of the way as they execute that strategy. If you aren’t going to include information about volunteer recruitment and accomplishment in social media channels as often as you do about fundraising campaigns, then say nothing as staff in charge of managing volunteers at your organization create their own blogs, web sites, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and Instagram or Flickr accounts to share the information they want out. What would be FAR better than forcing managers of volunteers to do marketing and public relations on their own? If you, public relations and marketing staff, sat down with the staff that work with volunteers at your organization and said, “How can I support you? Tell me what you’re doing. Let’s meet once a month and talk about it.” What you might find is that, instead of additional work, you get much-needed information to raise your organization’s profile online and in the media. Maybe volunteers are taking amazing photos of your organization’s work that you could use in a variety of ways. Perhaps there is a really marvelous story waiting for you to discover: maybe your organization is engaging in virtual volunteering in some really innovative ways, or is involving someone as an online volunteer who could never do so onsite. Maybe some hot current trend, like micro volunteering, is happening at your organization but you don’t even know it. Maybe volunteer engagement has helped your organization engage with communities or demographics you never would have reached otherwise. An organization that involves volunteers can be seen as more transparent and open to the community than one that doesn’t – are you leveraging that image properly in your outreach work? No more excuses, public relations and marketing staff: support your staff that recruit and engage with volunteers – or get out of the way and let them do their own publicity themselves. This message brought to you by: Grumpy Jayne.
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.

I can still inspire old school

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Months ago, I did a Volunteer Engagement 101 Workshop in Portland. Here’s feedback from such – which shows I can still inspire old-school action regarding volunteer engagement (not just the cutting edge Internet stuff):

I recently attended your volunteer management training for AmeriCorps
members in Portland…

Before Photo Vol BoardI just wanted to email you some before and after photos of my bulletin board at work. This bulletin board sat empty for the first almost 2 months of my service.

It wasn’t until your presentation that I knew exactly what I needed to do. I needed to let everyone know that walks through our doors who to contact if they’d like to volunteer, how to sign up to volunteer, and what vol opportunities we have.

After Photo Vol BoardSo, I took this information and created a large volunteer board. It’s very large and it’s one of the first things people see when they walk in our doors. It’s a work in progress but I wanted to share. Thanks for sharing your time and knowledge with us! You were very inspirational and informational!!

Thanks again,

Lynn Foster, North HELP Center, Volunteer & Resource Specialist, AmeriCorps OSSC

I try. I really do.

coyote1

 

How do international NGOs use Twitter?

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In the latest installment of the award-winning Twiplomacy study, global public relations and communications firm Burson-Marsteller looks at how international organisations use Twitter to promote their stories and how they engage with their followers. In November 2013, Burson-Marsteller analysed the 223 Twitter accounts of 101 international organisations and non-profit organizations. Over the past six years, all leading international organisations have set up at least one institutional Twitter account, and half of the 101 organisations analysed in this study have created a personal account for the head of the organization.

This is a terrific report. It not only looks at retweets, but also how many of these organizations are on other tweeters’ lists. I also like that the study looked at executive director’s tweets, not just the organizations, and that how often they interacted with others on Twitter was analyzed.

A great way to learn how success on Twitter can look – lessons for even small organizations, not just large, international ones.

TechSoup Digital Storytelling Challenge – Details Released

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Beginning April 2, nonprofits, libraries and other mission-based organizations can participate in TechSoup’s interactive trainings to learn valuable production techniques for create your own video or audio story to share online – which you can use to then create your own story to enter the TechSoup Digital Storytelling challenge.

2013 Digital Storytelling Challenge Timeline

April 2: Digital Storytelling Launch / Submissions OPEN
April 4: Webinar: Creating a Culture of Storytelling (register)
April 9: Tweet Chat: Storytelling with Data
April 11: Webinar: How to Use Your Digital Story
April 16: Tweet Chat: Storytelling Around the World
April 17: Google+ Hangout: Meet the Judges!
April 18: Webinar: Digital Storytelling Tools and Methods
April 23: Tweet Chat: Storytelling and Social Sharing
April 24: Google+ Hangout: Winners’ Circle!

April 30: Submissions close at 11:59 p.m. Pacific time

May 1 – 15: Community and expert judging

May 28: Awards Gala live in San Francisco and streaming online!

How to Enter

  1. Create a short video (90 seconds max) or a five-imageslide show
  2. Upload video to YouTube or slide show to Flickr
  3. Submit to TechSoup by 11:59 p.m. Pacific time on April 30

Here’s complete details on the challenge and how to enter.

And if you want to discuss digital storytelling for nonprofits, libraries, schools, NGOs and other mission-based folks, join in the Digital Storytelling branch of the TechSoup Online Community Forum.

No, I won’t post your jargon.

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You wrote and wanted me to publish about your BIG ANNOUNCEMENT on my blog. And I didn’t respond yet. Let me do it here, now, on my blog:

I’m not going to post about your BIG ANNOUNCEMENT.

Most of the time, I’m not going to post about your BIG ANNOUNCEMENT because it’s just not that big. It doesn’t rock my world. I don’t see how it will rock the world of my blog readers. It might be marginally interesting, but unless it fits perfectly with the focus of my blog and it makes me at least a little bit giddy, I’m not using my blog to promote it.

But in addition to your BIG ANNOUNCEMENT not being that big, it’s also often full of jargon. And I loathe jargon. Like:

  • enterprise-class, software-as-a-service pre-arrival solution
  • two-tier enterprise resource planning
  • centralized equivalency determination information
  • a world-class eco-system of innovative, on-demand, customizable capacity-building resource programs
  • crowd-sourced on-demand microvolunteering

It’s bullying-by-jargon. It’s exclusionary. And in your effort to show off your jargon hipness, you are turning potential supporters AWAY.

Please, by all means, introduce the world to new words and concepts. English is a growing language. The definition of network in my beloved 1943 Webster’s Dictionary isn’t what the definition of that word is now, and that doesn’t bother me – it’s a good thing.

But why hide your BIG ANNOUNCEMENT behind jargon? Don’t write to impress me, or anyone else, with your command of the latest corporate marketing terms; write to be understood. Do that with language that welcomes me, that I can understand immediately, without having to use Wikipedia to figure out what you’re actually trying to say. Do that with language that will still be understood (and used) in five years.

If you use Microsoft Word, you may have seen the ‘Flesch reading ease’ score. Use it when you are wondering just how understandable a sentence or paragraph might be. It’s no magic formula – think of it as a rough estimate regarding how well you are writing, in terms of being understandable.

Also see this free guide: ‘How to write in plain English‘. It’s for a British audience, so the spellings won’t be quite the same as they are in the USA, but the principles are universal.

Nonprofits *are* job creators!

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Recently, I heard a man on the TV ranting about why people without private sector experience are bad to serve in government offices. “They’ve never balanced a budget, created a job or had to struggle to make payroll!” he said.

And my head exploded. KAPOW.

When you are working in government, or a nonprofit, balancing budgets and struggling to make payroll is often MOST of what you do!

In the nonprofit and public sectors, the pressure to balance a budget – one that has often been cut drastically with no input from you, the person expected to balance that budget – is far greater than the for-profit/business world. And the struggle to make payroll is something I’ve seen far too often in nonprofit organizations, often because a corporation has slashed its own budgets and cut funding to the organization or initiative that had been promised for months, or a government agency suddenly had its budget cut and, therefore, had to cut the budget of nonprofits it was supporting.

And nonprofit organizations are job creators. Funding nonprofits, which are focused on improving or preserving communities for EVERYONE, are not only job creators, but also, the people that make communities places where people actually want to live and work – which helps those that start businesses. Nonprofits:

  • help improve education (which creates better workers),
  • help preserve and improve environmental health (which helps organic farmers and fishermen have better products)
  • help improve children’s health (which allows parents to have the time to work instead of caring for sick children – time, perhaps, even to start businesses)
  • help promote bicycle use (which helps create more business for bicycle shops, creates more ways for workers to get to their jobs, contributes to a healthier workforce, and creates more parking spaces for cars)
  • build and promote community gardens (which helps those that sell gardening implements and other supplies)
  • fund and manager arts organizations (which create jobs for actors, production staff and administration staff, as well as enhancing the community and making it more attractive to employers to locate businesses there)
  • build, sustain and grow universities and colleges (which train people in various areas of expertise – and these people become workers, even job creators, themselves)

and on and on.

The amount of misinformation being promoted by so many pundits and even elected officials in the USA regarding the realities of the third sector is startling, disheartening and destructive. I have worked primarily in the nonprofit and government sectors, and in those sectors, I most certainly HAVE had to balance budgets, create jobs and struggle to make payroll. In fact, I have had to be far, far more creative with resources and efficient in the use of time and resources than I have ever had to be in a for-profit setting. By contrast, most people I’ve known who have worked primarily in the corporate sector have little understanding of how to do a lot with a limited amount of resources: they can’t believe most nonprofits don’t have fully staff IT departments or the latest computer technologies, and are stunned that volunteers are, in fact, not free at all.

Nonprofits and government agencies have GOT to do a better job of talking about what they accomplish, what it takes to make those accomplishments possible, and how they make those accomplishments happen. Every nonprofit has an obligation to show their transparency and credibility, and to teach the media and general public about the resources and expertise needed to address critical human and environmental needs. The Internet has made it oh-so-easy to do that!

Also see:

theater as a community development/education tool – it takes more than artists

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It’s been a few years now since, for my Master’s degree, I embarked on a year-long investigation of the non-artistic elements necessary for success in “Theater as a Tool for Development” initiatives. It’s a subject that remains a very big interest for me. I wish I had the time and resources to research it further!

There are numerous organizations using theater techniques as part of their community development / education activities all over the world – for instance, to educate children about a health issue – and there are also numerous initiatives, publications, web sites and individuals that promote and chronicle successes regarding live, in-person performance as an effective tool for development. Even in our current age saturated with multi-media, live, in-person performance/TfD is a popular and effective tool for education, outreach and capacity-building regarding a variety of development issues, such as HIV/AIDS prevention, domestic violence, evolving gender roles, or good sanitation practices

However, there is little information on what has to be in place before these techniques are used, excluding performer training, to better ensure that these techniques will be well-received by an audience/participants, and to better ensure that the desired outcomes will be generated. My research was meant to fill in a bit of that gap. And my conclusion? Without deliberate, thoughtful cultivation of support for and trust in such an initiative among staff at the lead agency, among partner organizations, and among those for whom the theater-for-development techniques will be used, and without clear definitions of what everyone expects from TfD activities, such efforts will fail, no matter how experienced or enthusiastic your artistic staff is. In fact, in one case I studied, not doing this groundwork before hand turned out to be deadly.

My project included a review of key literature on TfD, and semi-structured interviews with 12 TfD practitioners. You can read online:

If you have undertaken similar research – not about theater as a tool for development, but specifically what needs to happen before such activities take place in order for them to be successful, give me a shout.

Why Your Organization Probably Doesn’t Need A Facebook Page

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An excellent blog: Why Your Company Probably Doesn’t Need A Facebook Page

I completely agree. And I think it’s true for many nonprofits, NGOs, community agenices and other organizations as well.

Shocked? Don’t be. Facebook is a great, appropriate outreach / engagement tool for many organizations – and a complete waste of time for others, as this blog explores.

Consider this: maybe all of your volunteers are on Facebook – but they don’t want to mix their Facebook activities with their volunteering. Offline, I don’t always feel comfortable talking about what I do as a volunteer at work with colleagues, or when I’m socializing with friends – perhaps I feel the same way online.

Having a booth at the local county fair might be a great way to create awareness about whatever issue your nonprofit is concerned with, or as a way to recruit volunteers – and might be a complete waste of time for others.

Same for putting an ad in the local newspaper.

Same for doing a PSA on a local radio station.

Same for putting a billboard up on a highway.

How do you know which outreach or engagement tool is right for your organization? Through knowing your potential audiences, through observing online activities by other organizations similar to your organization or also serving a similar community, and through asking your current clients, donors and volunteers how they heard about your organization and how they do or don’t want to use social media with your organization. Through experimenting. Through trial and error.

That said, if you are on Facebook, and want to use Facebook as a way to learn about effective volunteer / community engagement, about nonprofit / NGO management, about aid and development, or about my work, I would love for you to like my Facebook page. But it’s worth noting that a LOT of my friends haven’t done this, because they don’t like mixing work and fun (and they see their Facebook activities as purely for fun).

And if you are on Twitter, and want to use it for those similar reasons, I would love for you to follow me on Twitter. But, again, a LOT of my friends haven’t done this, because they don’t like mixing work and fun (and they see their Twitter activities as purely for fun).

January 5, 2017 update

I still believe 90% of this blog – and the blogs I link to in this blog. My only change is this: your nonprofit does need a page on Facebook, just to “own” your organization’s online real estate – the name of your organization on Facebook. This will mean people can find you on Facebook –  yes, they are probably looking for you, and are angry when they cannot find you – and it will also prevent someone else from creating a page for your organization without your knowledge. But if you aren’t going to publish a status update on Facebook at least once a week, if you aren’t going to mark “like” on every single comment made on your status updates, if you aren’t going to respond to questions and criticisms made on your status updates, then say so: publish a status update that says your organization does not regularly update its Facebook status update, and the best way to know what your organization is up to is… what? Check the web site regularly? Follow you on Twitter instead? Also, publish your email address in that one-and-only status update, and note that it’s the best way to reach you. Finally, set your privacy settings so that no one can post on your Facebook page, and so that if anyone mentions your organization on their own Facebook status update it doesn’t show up on your page.