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Kony Part One – Invest in Your Network

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So. The Kony campaign from Invisible Children. Check it out if you haven’t yet.

This campaign didn’t just happen one week. Years of network building went into it (among other things). Years.

Our concern (as Bright+3, an organization that helps organizations understand and succeed in the digital/networked world) is how this campaign has become as powerful and visible (and controversial) as it has.

To that end we want to share two wonderful pieces written in the past 24 48 hours. First, Jason Mogus at Communicopia writes “Why your nonprofit won’t make a Kony 2012” (And it almost certainly won’t. So sorry.)

The second piece, “[Data Viz] KONY2012: See How Invisible Networks Helped a Campaign Capture the World’s Attention,” was written by Gilad Lotan at SocialFlow.

Kony Network map
Kony Network map via SocialFlow

Jason Mogus itemizes how many (most?) large nonprofit advocacy organizations fall short in key capacities that are needed to put together and implement a campaign such as this. Those capacities (where many are falling short) might be summed up as:

  • Weak network. Organizations haven’t engaged people directly in person and are not even talking with them online. We think this is the largest of the big kahunas in this story. More below.
  • Lack of focus. Programs and communications are all over the map. Organizations working on many campaigns likely have many audiences. They don’t have the communications resources to speak clearly to everyone.
  • Policy trumps people. This is a tough one (see Ethan Zuckerman’s piece on real questions about oversimplifying complexity). How does a policy and research driven organization write clearly, passionately, and understandably for large audiences that it wants to engage in action? Most don’t try or when they do it’s muddied by the policy wonks.
  • Social web. Huh? Organizations that build lists (even networks, which are different than lists!) aren’t aligned with social network principles – the sauce that is interaction and multi-channel communications. If you’re going to build networks (or at least tap into them) your organization needs to be comfortable with social from top to bottom.

Jason speaks to the power and value of Invisible Children’s online/offline network that was critical to spreading word of this campaign. Building and caring for this sort of network takes time, focus, and a style of constituent interaction that most advocacy organizations are not built for or interested in.

It is this direct network building offline (especially) and online that, like a massive holiday lighting display, was switched on when the most recent campaign began.

Network Dissected

Gilad Lotan dives into greater detail of how the Invisible Children network functioned to effectively spread word of the campaign. Sure, there was a great video with a fabulously told story (see this piece by Anna Keenan for more on the importance of story and shared values in the Kony campaign), but it was a 30 minute video about human rights issues. Boring.

The network had been primed to act. The people that Invisible Children had met, invited to participate, and continually engaged over the years understood the issues and have been trained to act and share. The pre-existing networks created by Invisible Children over time were, through social media connections, able (and willing) to rapidly (and strongly) share the video and its message.

Lotan also points out that the campaign designed and positioned itself well to tap into the online networks of celebrities that appealed to its core audience. Invisible Children made it easy for supporters to tweet Taylor Swift, Oprah, and others with their own large Twitter followings. This demonstrates comfort with and understanding of networks.

Some, including Lotan, point out that this network is decidedly young (which tracks with social media engagement in general) and skews towards evangelical Christians. The latter is a well-organized network in its own right, one built on personal relationships (see Movement Building and Deep Change: A Call to Mobilize Strong and Weak Ties from the Engage Network for more on this).

What of It?

Jason Mogus makes the point that most organizations do not run their communications, digital, and programs in a way that makes a Kony-esque campaign possible. They are neither network focused nor social. And, for many organizations, this is okay. Policy and political expertise, lobbying and legal capacity, and research expertise are all desperately needed in the advocacy community.

The conflict in organizations comes from the fact that policy and lobbying organizations relentlessly invest in building online and offline lists in email, social media and direct mail. The “list” is the mythical source of unrestricted funding. Much of this list building comes through advocacy actions: “sign this petition” and “write to your Senator” (what some label as slacktivism).

These lists are called upon to respond to get behind big events, actions, fundraising campaigns and videos that should “go viral.” Online teams in these organizations struggle to light a fire under their lists, go big, and make an impact that the size of the list would imply is possible.

A friend wrote in an email that network communications like that shown in the Kony campaign isn’t in the DNA of policy-oriented organizations. We agree but that’s too bad. Network building, engagement, and policy advocacy shouldn’t be mutually exclusive.

 

Storytelling + Video = Power to change behavior

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A common refrain: Our video has a great story, great message, and clear call to action. But only 350 people watched it. WTF?

Story of Sushi
The "Story of Sushi" by Portland's Bamboo Sushi tells the story of how industrial fishing is destroying ocean life and presents alternatives. Something to think about with your next sashimi.

There are no simple reasons to explain why some videos take off and others languish in the dustbin of irrelevancy.

How did you distribute it? What was the keyword strategy? What sharing tools were used? Did you use AdWords, Facebook ads, or other paid marketing? How big is your social media audience? How engaged are they? Was Will Ferrell in your video? Useful questions though maybe the answer is simpler: people just didn’t connect with the story.

Perhaps you’ve seen the story of sushi video created by Portland’s Bamboo Sushi. We’ve embedded it below. The video is both clever and lovely in its simplicity and clarity of message. There is a story here: bad guys that overfish the seas, good guys that do it right, and the hero is the viewer – the person that has the opportunity to ask questions, know what’s going on and force change to happen.

What’s missing? The 2 x 4 over the head that has “take action now by calling your Senator.” The action is the story itself and its ability to make the viewer think about their behavior.

We will be the first to tell you that if you’re in the advocacy business you need to know your call to action in every message be it email, video, blog post or presentation.

But there is often greater power in using story to lead people to act on their own. A good story guides the participant to their own conclusions and you need not hit people over the head with your advocacy. Sometimes a big stick just scares people away while a good story makes them think. Thinking is good.

Designing for Careless Mistakes

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Photo by Flickr user griffithchris.Ted’s Valentine’s Day tweet: “Nothing says ‘we value your involvement’ like an email that starts with ‘Dear Name,’ – personalization fail.”

His point: this is not a particularly good way to sustain the support and enthusiasm of your donors.

I think he’s right, but I think there’s also another story worth telling: Setting up a merge with the recipient name but then not actually bringing those names in is such an obvious, careless, predictable mistake. Why would the CRM software allow a user to make this mistake in the first place?

Email clients are often designed to warn you – before they actually send the email – that you used the word “attachment” but didn’t actually attach anything, just in case you meant to. It’s an obvious, predictable error, and the software is designed to pay attention and warn you before you actually make this mistake. Hootsuite (my favorite third party solution for managing twitter feeds) won’t post your tweet until you actually tell it which account you want it posted to. Inadvertently tweeting to the wrong account is an obvious, easy-to-make, and predictable mistake, and HootSuite – by design – helps prevent you from making it.

Sure, there was a user error on that Valentine’s Day email. Somebody screwed up the merge on the ‘name’ field. But some user errors are common and predictable enough that the software ought to help you avoid making them.

A hint to CRM publishers: help me – as a typical user of your product I am tight on a deadline and prone to making careless errors – avoid making really stupid, careless mistakes. If I try to send an email that’s going to end up in everyone’s inbox with a “Dear Name” salutation, please make sure I actually want to do that before you send them.

Don’t phone in your social + weekly wrap

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Busy week so we’re going to wrap it by kinda sorta phoning it in. And there’s the theme for the main story here.

Puppy on the phone. Don't they have earbuds or something for dogs?Earlier this week I received an email of the “take action/write congress now” nature about an issue that to me seemed pretty intense, important and, well, worthy of stepping up and clicking that button to write my Congresswoman. All in all it was pretty well written and compelling.

A couple things struck me as odd.

The PS was a call to join the organization on Facebook and Twitter. The links went to the general Facebook wall and Twitter page. If taking a shot at clouding an advocacy action with a social media call to action then make the landing page relevant to the action at hand.

There should be one clear call to action and one clear goal in your message. If one clicks the Facebook link she’s not coming back to the email, especially if the content on Facebook at that moment has nothing to do with the issue.

At this point, folks, people know about Facebook, know your organization has a Facebook page, and they know how to find it and follow your organization. Why distract from your message with a confusing call to the obvious?

Focus. Drive towards a goal-oriented conversion or don’t bother. Don’t phone it in.

Second, the message was “signed” by the organization and not a person. Perhaps this has little or no impact on the number of respondents but it sends a message that there aren’t actual people there writing these messages, staying on top of the issue…someone that could tell me personally what the hell is happening. People connect with people. Not organizations.

Wrapping up the week

Some smart thinking on the Intertubes this week:

Punk views on social media writes about the brand army. A lot of smart organizations look to identify some of their most active social media followers and give them tools to spread the word. Many others just sorta hope that will happen. Instead, look at social media following as the start of the engagement process. Empower and enable everyone there to get involved, spread the word and speak on your behalf. Create an army.

Get a digital product manager for your nonprofit. WHAT? Daniel Atwood ran digital at the impressive Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Association for several years. He notes that digital has changed the nature of how many people view the role of nonprofit organizations. Increasingly,  folks want tools to make change directly. Heard of Change.org? Nonprofits know what’s going on in their field and are often creating tools for change. Why not think of these as products for people, not just staff?

Digital teams need to get a handle on how they position themselves in the organization if they want to stop underperforming. That’s part of the message from Jason Mogus over at Communicopia, a firm that’s been putting forth a ton of smart thinking lately about digital teams. Fact is most digital staff really need to build their leadership skills and take charge of their team’s destiny. It won’t be easy but is imperative for the team success (and the organization’s).

Lessons From the SOPA/PIPA Fight

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Wikipedia screenshot by Flickr user LoveNMoreLove.The Congressional fight over the SOPA and PIPA bills wasn’t a fight about whether intellectual property should be protected – virtually everyone agrees on this – but about how best to accomplish it. In fact, the most visible voices in the fight over SOPA/PIPA, on both sides, were people and industries with livelihoods based on creating or protecting intellectual property. But the substantive positions between proponents and opponents, and the implications of the legislation, were considerable nonetheless.

For nonprofits, the implications were substantial even if they weren’t generally highlighted. Making service providers fully liable for copyright violations occurring anywhere on their networks would almost certainly lead them – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social engagement platforms among them – to aggressively censor information before it is ever posted, erring on the side of expansive and overreaching prohibitions rather than risk liability. And it gives repressive governments, well-heeled corporations, and others a substantially enhanced ability quickly to shut down web sites and entire domains, a power easily applied to silence online speech they dislike for whatever reason. For nonprofits involved in supporting democracy or human rights movements around the world, these provisions were especially troubling. Ethan Zuckerman and Joi Ito of the MIT Media Lab have a good blog post (“MIT Media Lab Opposes SOPA, PIPA“) explaining some of this.

But the SOPA/PIPA fight was important for nonprofits in another way, as well: a technical, largely unreported, non-issue exploded into the popular consciousness in a matter of months, fundamentally changing the debate in Washington, D.C. In an incredibly short period of time, SOPA/PIPA opponents repeatedly made national and local press (local television stations were covering this!), compiled petitions signed by millions nationwide (Google says seven million signed its petition, and Fight for the Future reports ten million on another one), and produced a day-long Wikipedia blackout. I suspect there are a lot of lessons non-profit folks can learn from the SOPA/PIPA fight. Here are five:

1. Clear and Compelling Message
Opponents were able to take two very complex pieces of legislation and explain them in clear terms that spoke directly to the values and interests of their intended audiences. Tech people understood the implications of the DNS-blocking provisions, people whose livelihood depends on the ability to share information understood the implications of making social networking sites liable for copyright violations by people using the sites, and free-speech advocates understood the censorship implications.

2. Critical Mass
Opponents hit a critical mass, and their stories went viral, in part because everyone across key communities started talking about it about at the same time. Some of that was probably blind luck, but it was also because key opponents found ways to reach out aggressively across their networks more or less in unison. If you weren’t aware or engaged yet, but you were part of those networks, you heard about the issue a bunch of times within a short period, and then often you’d turn around and share the information with your networks, amplifying the viral effect. This was a real-time example of the “people have to hear something a dozen times before they notice it” marketing adage.

3. Calls to Action
Opponents, when reaching out to the not-yet-engaged, were able to offer a range of easy ways to express support. Calls to action included options like replacing your social networking profile photo with a “Stop SOPA” image, signing the national petition, adding your name to sign-on letters, and spreading the word about the blackouts by Wikipedia, Reddit, and others. Tons of individuals and individual companies created their own badges, images, and other easy-to-use tools. And many of these calls to action were themselves viral (or at least amplified the overall virality of the message). This was often organic … although there were people coordinating and collaborating (and some in prominent positions), there wasn’t, to my knowledge, a conventional campaign leadership team calling the shots, issuing assignments, and allocating resources. People across the networks felt empowered to contribute, and contribute they did.

4. Volume
We often argue that narrowly focused outreach strategies can have more impact than untargeted outreach strategies. Efforts that depend on numbers alone typically don’t cut through the noise or they fail to offset more targeted strategies by the other side (“another day, another 5,000 emails from some nonprofit advocating for something”). The SOPA/PIPA fight illustrates an exception, however: if you can push the volume level high enough, even a strategy largely dependent on numbers can have a real impact. The number of news stories, the number of emails and phone calls received by legislators, the number of people signed on to the petition, the significance of Wikipedia blacking out … all of this resulted in a volume level that was impossible for legislators to ignore, and many flipped from supporting SOPA/PIPA to advocating for a slowdown or even opposing it altogether.

5. Telling Concrete Stories
And, lest this get lost in the excitement of a quickly organized large-scale national campaign, it looks like concrete stories from real individuals who would be directly impacted by SOPA/PIPA were also really important to persuading legislators to shift their positions. The high volume efforts got their attention, but the legislators and staff I spoke with wanted to know – in very tangible terms – what the legislation would actually mean in specific instances for real people and real businesses. The large-scale outreach work created space, but from here it looks like the concrete stories were essential for closing the deal.

Although I don’t think the SOPA/PIPA fight is necessarily a good model for every advocacy campaign, it’s not difficult to predict that the so-called “internet community” will become increasingly political and increasingly sophisticated. There are plenty of lessons from this fight for other advocacy efforts, and lots of opportunity to collaborate with other constituencies as well as watch and learn as online advocacy strategies mature.

MacWorld just posted a interesting analysis, and we’d love to hear about the best analyses you’ve come across. We’d also love to hear your thoughts on the lessons to learn from the SOPA/PIPA fight.

A Culture of Mentorship

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Photo by Flickr user JonathanCohen.

Back in May, I wrote about the tech startup incubator program that Trey and I were participating in. The program (Founder Institute) was extremely intensive, really challenging, and very worthwhile, and we are now close to launching our first real mobile app.

One key element of the incubator program, and a pervasive part of the tech startup culture, is the idea of mentorship.

You’ll sometimes find mentorship in the nonprofit world, but it’s not pervasive and even when you find it the notion is typically much less rigorous and structured than we are finding in the tech startup world. Most of the serial entrepreneurs we’ve worked with have had mentors, most proudly talk about them and their ongoing relationships, and those relationships are often structured and even formalized through written agreements.

While I’m sure there are plenty of internet technology entrepreneurs that don’t have mentors, it’s a deep-seated part of the culture that, in my experience, exemplifies a strong ethic across the community of the experienced folks supporting the newer ones. The mentors themselves learn through the teaching, the new folks are more likely to succeed, and the entire community of entrepreneurs is strengthened.

The nonprofit community is dense with the entire spectrum of experience, from total newbies to grizzled veterans. Finding ways to strengthen the notion of mentorship as part of the nonprofit culture seems like a high-return opportunity.

A useful links:

Blackbaud, Convio, Dessert and Digital Strategy

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It was just two weeks ago today that a great deal of (electronic) ink began to spill and brou’s began to ha ha over the purchase of Convio by Blackbaud. For most of humanity (approximately 99.9% of it, anyway) this is about as relevant as the color of dried out chewing gum.

2011 Nonprofit Technology Conference
The masses assemble at 2011 Nonprofit Technology Conference. Clearly, organizations have a thing for technology. Photo via VolunteerMatch

So, let’s write about it here, shall we?

Let’s say you work in nonprofit fundraising or marketing. Or perhaps you run an organization. Maybe you deal with membership or perhaps accounting. Then again, you might run field organizing or online campaigns. Maybe social media. You run the website, write the emails to donors, or research reports that end up on said web, email or social media channels.

If you do any of those things at a nonprofit (and there aren’t many other things to do, really) then your work is affected by the software that Convio, Blackbaud and their peers produce. You see, these systems don’t just run email lists. These are CRM’s, CMS’s, donor management, social media, membership and advocacy systems. It’s no surprise, then, that 0.01% of the population (and a fair chunk of the 17 people  reading this) get worked up about the impact these companies (and their business practices) have on nonprofit organizations.

What does it mean?

Some are justly concerned about companies merging and making many millions of dollars on the backs of nonprofits struggling to improve the world, feed the poor, help children and protect clean air. Others point out that this reduces competition between the two biggest players in the market while creating opportunity for newer and/or smaller (and more nimble) operators.

[Read more…] about Blackbaud, Convio, Dessert and Digital Strategy

Run It Like a Business

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Being like a business isn't always all it's cracked up to be. Photo by Flickr user watz.

Denver Mayor Hancock vows to “run government like a business.” Charles Bronfman and Jeffrey Solomon, in the Wall Street Journal, argue that “philanthropy must be conducted like business.”

It’s a persistent if tiresome meme.

We understand the idea, of course: a nonprofit is more likely to be high-impact if it’s focused, disciplined, and outcome-focused. And we agree. But these aren’t characteristics of “business,” and the prescription shouldn’t be “run your nonprofit or government agency like a business.” Rather, they are characteristics of effective organizations regardless of sector, and the prescription ought to be: “run your organization using best practices and learning from across sectors.”

We’ve argued in this blog and elsewhere (and it’s a key argument of our forthcoming book, The Nimble Nonprofit), that nonprofits are like businesses in fundamental ways and have a lot to learn from the best practices of other sectors. There are plenty of practices common in the private sector that nonprofits would do well to draw from. (And yes, of course, the private sector can learn from nonprofits, too, but at Bright+3 our focus is on helping nonprofits improve).

But that’s very different than arguing that governments or nonprofits should be run “like a business.” In fact, for every example of a well-run, successful business you can point to others – Lehman Brothers, Enron, Kodak, Saab, Borders, Hollywood Video, MySpace, and Washington Mutual just to name a few – that exemplify poorly run businesses.

And while governments aren’t really our focus, it’s worth noting that the metaphor breaks down pretty quickly. Although part of what government does involves providing services – providing value to stakeholders – many of its responsibilities simply don’t track to conventional notions of return-on-investment: protecting rights, navigating the balance between the interests of individuals and those of groups or neighborhoods, ensuring that everyone in the community has a meaningful opportunity to participate in community decisions (if you wanted to create a slow, inefficient decision-making process, ensuring that everyone gets to play a role is a great strategy), and the like.

When it comes to government officials proclaiming that government should be run like a business, I worry that they don’t really understand the unique, non-market role of government. When nonprofit folks and philanthropists make the same assertion about nonprofits, I think they are idealizing the private sector (which has many, many more examples of poor practice and failure than it does of success).

Nonprofits (and government) have a lot to learn from best practices in the business world, and – to further complicate matters – nonprofits really are businesses in many important respects. Pretending that the laws of business physics don’t apply to nonprofits is a conceit that often undermines our ability to solve problems and effect change. But the facile “being like a business” sound bite obscures and undermines those lessons rather than highlighting then.