Say hello to Networked Nonprofits - (Part 1 of 11 NetNon series)

I am going to share my thoughts about the book "The Networked Nonprofit" by Beth Kanter and Allison Fine over 11 posts (one for each chapter).  But rather than just tell you what the chapter is about, I am going to share what I learned from it, any reactions and extra thoughts that I would add.  However the big caution I have with this, is that I am just not as smart and experienced as Beth and Allison, so you should probably just buy the book.

First, what is a Networked Nonprofit? Here is a bit from the book about that. But it is hard to get the real picture from these words.  Reading the examples of how this plays out in the real world is awesome in the book.

"Networked Nonprofits are simple and transparent organizations. They are easy for outsiders to get in and insiders to get out."

"Networked Nonprofits don't work harder or longer than other organizations, they work differently. They engage in conversations with people beyond their walls - lots of conversations- to build relationships that spread their work through the network." 

So what were my thoughts from the chapter? - I am glad that I asked myself.

Our staff and organization are too overworked. We dont have the resources, time or staff to do it all. However we are unwilling to give up any control. We use excuses like Brand Management and Quality Control to hide behind, saying that we need to control the message and only our staff can do the work right. We are very official in everything we do and proud of it. In case you dont pick up on my sarcasm, I would question how this needs to change.

Making the changes is not an easy task for many organizations though. Large organizations can have long histories and deeply rooted cultures, couple with org charts that reinforce silos within the organization. If an organization cant effectively communicate, network and share within its own structure, how can it ever be transparent and open to others.  If I had the answer on how to fix this, I would share it, but I dont have a silver bullet here.  Maybe the book will have these answers.

"Networked Nonprofits are not afraid to lose control of their programs and services, their logos and branding, messages and messengers because they know that in return they will receive the goodwill and passion of many people working on their behalf."

OK, now those are just fighting words. We are afraid of this. We see the brand challenges that others have faced because of corrupt leadership, misused funds, staff behavior, and so many other reputation disasters. Many of us have seen or heard a message on behalf of a nonprofit that is off course, inappropriate or misinformed. So we must fight to keep control and own all of this, right? Right? Hello, arent you listening? We need control. --- No actually we only think we have control.

Thinking that you have control of your brand and message is like thinking you can hold jello in your hands forever, eventually it is oozing out of control.  People are shaping, impacting and changing your brand everyday, whether you give them the control or not. So why not embrace those that "get it", give them information and get them involved?

This is not an easy change to get started. Nuff said.

The chapter continues by "busting" some social media myths:

• Our constituents aren't online. Busted.
• Face-to-face isn't important anymore. Busted. (IRL FTW!)
• Social media isn't core to our work. Busted.
• Using social media is hard. Busted.
• Using social media is time-consuming. SPOILER ALERT - Confirmed to a point.

 I love the thoughts that went into this part. Try to address the resistance upfront.

"Conversations activate the natural creativity and passion that people bring to causes they care about."

 So lets stop talking to ourselves or at our constituents and really engage and empower them.

The metrics of fishing

How much did you catch? That is the first question people ask when you go fishing. And they expect you to have counted. But you cant just say how many you caught, you also are expected to know their weight, length, type and what bait you used. That is all so obvious and straight forward, but let me tell you a short story.

I am in my late 30's, ok fine really close to 40. And my two oldest sons are 17 and 18. These are years of big change for them. I dont seem to get enough time with them. All I have enough time to do is talk to them about being responsible, making the right choices and what did they do now...  I talked to Grandpa and we arranged to stay out fishing with just the older boys. We had the gear, the weather was great (a lot dark though, which doesn't mix well with sharp hooks), we had our bait and we had a fishing plan.  When the fishing trip was all over, everyone asked the obvious questions stated above.

Now if you hadnt heard that very short synopsis of my story, you would think that the measure of success is how many fish we caught, right? But I hope you see that my measurement of success in this scenario was me spending time with my sons and whether we connected. Did they see that I am more than a mean face that says "no" and pushes them to be who they could be?

Dont you think we should be measuring our social media activity with this type of lens? Yes, you need to be able to report on where you fished, number caught, size, type and what bait you used. However, maybe it is time to stop focusing on the fish and look at what made the trip special and the connections you made while fishing?

I dont care what you want to hear!

Sometimes when I look at a website, read a status or check out an article and I think to myself wow, they have a lot to say but the really dont care about what we want to hear or what we care about.

For example, my blog was started for me to have a voice, think through some thoughts and just share some of my ideas.  I am not looking to build up a huge following, become famous or tailor to what my audience wants (of course that assumes I have an audience at all). I write my blog posts so that I can process a thought from start to finish. By putting my thoughts into words online and publishing them publicly I am forcing myself to make a statement and allow people to react (whether that is bad or good reactions). Some of my posts people have actually enjoyed and shared.  Others I enjoyed a lot and no one seemed to care.

The danger that I see here though is when this attitude or thought process crosses over to an organization, company or any other website that is driving toward a goal.

This blog is for fun and sharing, there is no mission to be met or sales to be made.

But when you are planning your website, social media, emails or whatever communication you are working on, is your thought process too focused on what you want to say? Well you might just be telling your audience that you dont care what they want to hear.

I'm just sayin.....

Facebook Comments Again

I was excited that John Hayden shared our YMCA's comment escalation flow chart on his blog! It seems that many people can identify with it.

Here is John's post:

http://www.johnhaydon.com/2010/08/org-facebook-page-decision-flowchart/

Here is a quote that I liked the most from his post:

Five reasons why a decision flow-chart makes sense

1. Scalability – Staff can be brought into the social media workflow quicker with simple directions.

2. Consistency - A simple response policy means that you’ll more likely respond as one voice, instead of many disjointed voices.

3. Alignment - You can ensure that tactical responses on social media aligns with your over-arching business goals.

4. Speed - The quicker foot-soldiers understand protocol, the quicker comments get responded to.

5. Smarts - Granting the ability for staff to make decision on how to respond means that legal council can spend time on genuine legal issues.

I will be running a training this week for about 45 Facebook authors for the 20 or so pages that we will be launching on Aug 23. John Haydon's points really made me think through how I was going to convey the importance of replying to comments to our authors. I need to be more deliberate about explaining that there is no silver bullet to replying, but you need to have a plan. You cant just wing it, especially when there are multiple authors and you are replying on behalf of the organization.

"We already know what some of the comments are going to be from some of our members. We already see them in comment cards, email, phone calls, conversations, etc. So how can we be ready to reply to those?" That remark came up during a recent planning meeting. And it is true, we will get some of the same comments. My thought is, you would respond in the same way as when you received the comments in the other means, except maybe look for some brevity and give a way to follow up.

One of the biggest push backs we get from our staff is that they are already so busy that how are they going to fit in yet another task to reply to comments.  That is why we really need this structure to help them respond quickly, professionally and confidently.

Thanks for the mention John and for the extra inspiration to keep thinking this through.

Facebook Metrics! Measure from the start

August 23, 2010 is the planned date that the YMCA of Metro Chicago will be launching about 20 Facebook pages, one for each of our membership centers.  In about 2 months time we have created a process to build the pages, train the authors, drive the strategy and make it happen.  But we recognize that we will need to measure our progress. So this is when I turned to Beth Kanter for advice, well her blog, not her personally.

Spreadsheet aerobics is a blog post from Beth that talks about how to measure your Facebook work and experiments. I took her advice, but I am doing it one step at a time. 

We have created a set of trainings, materials and steps to rapidly deploy our social media sites.  Our first effort is Facebook for our membership centers. Our first goal is to establish our presence and provide the foundation to begin to connect with our members.  We want to be where our communities are and communicate with them they want to.

Once we have the basics working, authors trained and a presence established we will work to equip our YMCA staff as authors to begin to create engagement with purpose. But we have to start somewhere, which for us will be creating the presence, training our staff and just getting it rolling!

In that effort, we will just be tracking the basic stats straight from Facebook Insights.  Each our Facebook page administrators will download the interactions stats into Excel and send it to us.  We will then copy those numbers straight into this report format.  Our hope is to be able to show the correlation between those actively interacting on their page with the increase in participation of fans.

Anyway, here is spreadsheet report, based on concepts from Beth Kanter.

Facebook metrics

View more documents from Steve Heye.

NTEN Tech Leadership Academy and what I learned already.

While I have been working on my transition from Steve Heye to just "the Steve," I have been too busy to post to my blog.  So instead I am just going to share some of the things I have learned while preparing for the upcoming Tech Leadership Academy from NTEN. I'm presenting with John Merritt, but I have already learned a few things without the event even happening yet, just imagine once it does happen.



Incredible training op from NTEN - Technology Leadership Academy! This is a free training for smaller orgs, but it is so much more than just a training.  They have assembled some of the best trainers, well plus me, to cover the spectrum of technology topics.

Apply before July 30 right here! http://www.nten.org/techacademy

Part of what they will be covering in the Academy above is a great diagram that is in a slideshow from the awesome Holly Ross . The slide shows an adapted, simplified version of the IT Alignment stages that I refer to a lot. But they have added some arrows indicating that as alignment increases the technology brings additional service to the mission.  I like the simplicity of it.

But then she also a second diagram (but it looks like she is borrowing it from Save the Children) of a IT Strategy pyramid that talks about how to progress forward in these IT Alignment stages. This diagram helps illustrate that only one of the levels is solely focused on tech tools, the foundation.

The second level requires examining your operations and tech. The third level is not just business steps, it is how you deliver your programs, serve your constituents, meet your mission with tech.

The top of the triangle is all about what you do differently, this requires not just thinking about how you deliver services, but how you can leverage technology to completely change your whole organization, add a new service or completely redefine the way you meet your mission leveraging technology.

To see the full presentation that Holly created you can visit SlideShare at: http://www.slideshare.net/nten_hross/let-a-thousand-tech-flowers-bloom

Thanks for inviting me to participate Holly, looking forward to it!

IT Manifesto and Collection of things...

Holly Ross posted "A Leadership Manifesto: Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom" on the NTEN blog. Please take a minute to go to this post and make your comment, especially if you have a different viewpoint. This is a great post.  Here are a couple quotes that I cant help but share.

"Right now, in our sector, we need technology leaders.  We are standing right on top of a critical inflection point, and we owe it to our causes to make sure that we navigate the change as best as we possibly can. So I am calling on all of you to stand up and lead.  We will follow you."

"The old style of IT management was a command-and-control model.  It was about "experts" making decisions for the end users and mandating those decisions. These days, there are more experts than you think. innovation and expertise in technology can come from any staffer in any role, and technology leaders need to recognize and embrace that.  We need to run IT shops that protect our assets while encouraging this innovation. When everyone's a part of process, the revolution happens much more quickly."

And from out of the comments from Holly:
"tech is definitely undefined and muddy now. It's out of the back room and out in every department at your organization. Think about how we used to deal with IT...."  "now technology is a completely different beast. It's about communicating, conversing, collecting, sharing, advocating and more. It's about all the ways that we meet your missions."

Holly hints that the conversation about technology leaders has only just begun for the next year.  I cant wait to see what comes out of this.

And here are a few other gems I want to share:
Recording of a presentation on IT Alignment that John Merritt and I did for NTEN. It is worth a watch, we were on something of a roll that day.

Slideshow of Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom from Holly Ross.

Forget the Tech, Lets Talk Mission - Great article from John Merritt (he wrote it and just added my name)

And now for something completely different, be sure to take time to order your copy of Beth Kanter and Allison Fine's new book the Networked Nonprofit. Read more about the book and the launch!

Flickr Photo credit: Chris.Corwin