Nonprofit Land

A co-worker forwarded this opportunity from the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation. RWJF is very forward-thinking and I like the idea behind this program.

RWJF Evaluation Fellowship Program for Non Profit Organizations
Application deadline - June 29, 2009.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Retooling Professionals Evaluation Fellows program seeks to diversify the evaluation field by providing individuals with the necessary skills and training to become internal program evaluators. During the one-year fellowship, non-profit professionals will be trained in evaluation methodology while working on a real-world evaluation project for their employer. Each fellow will receive approximately 40 hours of training in two 3-5 day workshops. The non-profit organizations they represent will receive a $5,000 award and each fellow will receive a travel stipend of $1,500. Additionally, the fellows will receive technical assistance with completing an internal evaluation project at their organization.

The program’s goal is to help nonprofit professionals become better internal evaluators of their programs and better consumers of information for decision-making. The program also aims to equip participants with evaluation skills that will help enhance the evaluation capacity of their organizations. Ultimately the program seeks to infuse the evaluation field with well-trained individuals from diverse backgrounds, experiences and perspectives to meet the increasing diversity of programs and communities that the profession serves.

To be eligible for the fellowship, non-profit professionals must:

Allyson Kapin at Frogloop reports that Facebook is losing some of its stickiness:

Facebook is the 5th most trafficked site in the United States. Over 179,000 nonprofits utilize Facebook Causes but just how sticky is Facebook? You may be surprised to see some recent stats that question how successful Facebook is as an engagement tool.

An Evolving Platform
Is Facebook worth the time? Yes, I think so. Whereas Twitter is a conversation, Facebook is a broadcast channel.

Facebook has become the Walmart of the Internet. Where else are you potentially going to reach 200 million people? You won’t ever be able to reach all of them, but it provides another touchpoint in your online campaign to build relationships. You can establish a community among users with similar interests. It’s easier to build a community from an established supply of users than get those eyeballs to find your own web site or social network. Ultimately, you want those people on your site and getting your e-mails and tweets, and Facebook helps build that bridge.

Over the past five years, Facebook has evolved and will continue to evolve. Not only has the platform changed, but the lives of its users are changing. It’s not surprising that as new technologies and sites emerge and the Facebook generation ages, statistics surrounding the site will change. (To put it in perspective, the first generation to use Facebook as college freshman have now been in the workforce for one year.)

Platform Issues
As Allyson and other sources have noted, Facebook hasn’t raised much money for nonprofits. I would cite part of that problem as infrastructure. Causes have always sucked. What was originally a completely separate social network, Causes merged with Facebook when 3rd party apps were allowed. It still wasn’t perfect because individual users had to download the cause app and then search for your cause. It was cumbersome. In order to get a donation, it took 5-6 clicks. Those are terrible odds. Why not just direct people to your web site, which likely has a red “Donate Now” button on the homepage?

Facebook also didn’t help matters by not providing a good service for nonprofits and businesses until recently with fan pages, nor did they educate organizations about the difference between a profile and a fan page. Also factor in that fan pages only just got to join the feed with updates and status messages during the last rollout, and you have a situation where the tools never matched the potential.
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The social media world is overwhelming. This should be a very cool tool to help decipher the Twitterverse.

I recently moved and have yet to get web-access at the new place. (It’s surprisingly pleasant to be shut off from the world. No cable or Internet). Due to limited web access, posting has been slow as of late. My apologies.

If you’re like me and the development/communications director at a small nonprofit, it’s a struggle to find grant opportunities. (Why can’t somone develop a Google for grants?)

Today, TechSoup has GrantStation on sale for $99 today. Normally, GrantStation retails for $599.

Looking forward to using this resource.

Today, I had the opportunity to present a webinar on Twitter. Frequent readers know my love/obsession with this service, so I enjoyed getting to evangelize my favorite social media tool. Slides from today’s webinar are posted below.

Here is a quick slide show on blogger relations that a colleague of mine put together in DC last week. Rachel Steinberg, a brillant friend from grad school, also contributed.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to attend the PRSA|GA Annual Conference. It was a great event with some of the best PR minds in the South.

The highlight of the day was the panel discussion featuring, “A Conversation with PR Living Legends” with Harold Burson, Burson-Marsteller, Bob Cohn, Cohn, Overstreet & Parrish and Ofield Dukes, Ofield Dukes & Associates.

I particularly enjoyed hearing Harold Burson’s remarks. This man is truly a legend. He helped pioneer the field of public relations and has been in practice since WWII. At one point, he mentioned “Eddie Bernays,” and all I could think was, “This man actually knew Edward Bernays?!?”

Burson remarked that from the mid-1970s to the late nineties, public relations was more “communications” than strategic counsel. The crux of the field was to disperse information and not help companies or organizations operate strategically.
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This week a colleague of mine in DC led a seminar on blogging. She asked me to help her pull together a five minute presentation on blogger relations.

First and foremost, the key to all social media is building a relationship not selling a product, promoting a cause or placing a story.

1. Blogger relations does not equal media relations.
Bloggers are individuals. They can post and write what they please and when they please. While respected bloggers will be honest, timely and accurate, there are no gatekeepers like traditional media. The best bloggers will rise to the top, join blogrolls or blog groups/associations (i.e. Blogher). These sites act somewhat to provide guidelines and standards for bloggers.

2. Bloggers are not one-size-fits-all.
Even when bloggers are grouped into niches (i.e.Mommybloggers, D-I-Y bloggers, political bloggers), blogging is very individualistic. When pitching them, read through his/her archives and get to know that person. Individually tailor your message to them. Do not use a blanket pitch.

3. E-mailing a press release is not blogger relations.
Do not cut and paste your press release. After you’ve taken the time to read a blog, craft a personalized email that introduces who you are, where you work and why you are contacting them.

4. Blogger relations is about building relationshops not getting a hit on the web.
When reaching out to bloggers, don’t just expect to get a post out of the pitch. Try to build a relationship with that person. When a blogger builds trust in your organization/brand/cause/product that will increase your social capital on the web. Blogger relations should be a long-term strategy.

Here’s a related post that I wrote last year about when your organization is mentioned in the blogosphere. Blogger relations works both ways.

There are much more detailed and knowledgeable posts on the topic of blogger relations:

A case study from Todd Defren at PR Squared.

“Brian Solis on Blogger Relations

Lately, there have been a lot of articles circulating on the web about the failure of social media to effectively fundraise. While I’m not sure if you’ll ever be able to directly correlate your tweets to the bottom line, social media is invaluable in relationship-building. Twitter has been instrumental in establishing relationships with local media.

Last week, I tried a mini-experiment with Twitter. Before I called all the local outlets, I sent out a tweet with a link to a press release posted on our blog. I don’t know if it worked since our event was a breakfast on a Wednesday morning, and everyone usually covers it. However, I did get feedback from one of the local news stations about my outreach to reporters.

How often in the traditional PR world has a reporter e-mailed you (in this case it was a producer who frequently tweets) and offered feedback on how to make the process easier? I’ve only been in the professional field for five years, but that’s never happened to me before, nor have I ever heard it happening. At professional development sessions or graduate classes, it was always advised to seek feedback from reporters, but who ever does it? I genuinely appreciated this individual taking time from his busy day and helping me do my job better. Why did this happen? Because I frequently “talk” to him and other media tweeple in Chattanooga about anything from politics to old TV shows. Twitter allows you to put a personality behind your professional skills.

Therein lies the power of social media. Services such as Twitter lower the barrier of entry in contacting people and establishing relationships.

Right now social media is hot and there are a lot of consultants out there trying to make a buck by selling a lot of fancy services. It’s pointless. Social media is no different from real conversations. You don’t need to create elaborate new strategies on how to reach social media users. Just think of social media as a very large townhall or church. Information spreads on the interwebs the same way that it does in real life. In fact watching a message get retweeted is a lot like playing the playground game of telephone.

In related news, the Bulldog Reporter ran a story today on Superior Social Media Pitches.