Wired Causes

You are browsing the archives of 2010 March.

As social media becomes increasingly embraced by mainstream employers, how can you write a social media policy for your organization that both celebrates the positive side and addresses the negative side of social media?  The March Net2 Think Tank asked for examples of effective social media policies and this round-up has some great examples to get you started creating a social media policy in your organization!

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Photo Source: Yuba Colleage Public Space Back in September, 2008, after reading this post by Chris Brogan about taking your blog to the next level, I was inspired. I knew that I was outgrowing my information design as well as…

Note from Beth: Every now and then, I get asked when did you first discover the power of the social web? I actually have a repertoire of stories, but one of them is about Michaela Hackner (Kalabird.) I connected with…

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Salesforce.com is a popular cloud computing customer relationship management (CRM) database that’s used by tens of thousands of companies around the globe. Nonprofits are utilizing Salesforce CRM to manage donors, activists, community members, contacts and more. Through the Salesforce.com Foundation product donation program, qualified 501©(3) organizations are able to receive a donation of 10 Salesforce CRM licenses. If you want to learn more, join us for this upcoming free webinar.

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Mark Horvath, known as “HardlyNormal” on Twitter and who is a tireless advocate for the cause of homelessness, was the winner of the SXSW Pepsi Refresh Challenge. Gary Vee, a social media celebrity champion and many others, helped this cause…

Crowdsourcing View more presentations from Beth Kanter. I was honored to design and facilitate a panel at SXSW on Sunday called “Crowd Sourcing Innovative Social Change.” The panelists were Holly Ross, Amy Sample Ward, David Neff, and Kari Dunn Saratovsky….

The Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) is to nonprofit techies what SXSW is to social media professionals. Translation: You have to go! I’ve been going before the NTC was the NTC. This year’s conference will celebrate the 10th Anniversary. Woo Hoo!…

Mashable and George Weiner have some excellent new data to share about social media usage and mobile giving.  These three articles are MUST READS:

1. Mashable: Our Social Media Obsession by the Numbers (based on a Retrevo study)

2. Mashable: The Current State of Twitter by Muhammad Saleem

3. George Weiner in the Huffington Post: Mobile Giving and Why People Are Bad at Poker

Here are the highlights, in case you don’t have time to read all of these articles.

Article 1: People who are into social media are REALLY into it - especially iPhone people.

Article 2: Twitter just hit 10 billion Tweets, which is amazing, but there are still a lot of dabblers on Twitter who give up after a month.  And a lot of useless Tweets. 

Article 3: Nonprofits are whipped into a frenzy about the state of mobile, thanks to the millions raised by the Red Cross for Haiti.  As George Weiner puts it: “Everyone thinks getting a mobile text-2-donate short code will win them a huge pot of money (or medium pot). There are currently a little more than 400 approved charities through the Mobile Giving Foundation and—in the three weeks following Haiti—there were more than 800 requests from non-profits about mobile giving.”

George offers a reality check from the Mobile Giving Foundation:

20% of our not-for-profits earn 80% of the revenue generated from text-2-give programs.  This data follows a standard power law distribution; it is clear simply having a mobile-giving program will not ensure success.

So what to do?  Get his tips here.

You may also want to look at a Convio/Edge/SeaChange study on Haiti-related mobile giving that found the following.  The friends to friends angle is especially interesting. 

The study, Early Signals on Mobile Philanthropy found among respondents:

•77% knew that they could donate via texting to support Haiti relief work
•17% of Gen Y & 14% of Gen X donated to Haiti via texting
•3% of both Boomer and Mature donated via texting
•36% of all respondents would consider texting a donation after a crisis
•31% would text a donation if a friend was raising money for a charity