These days marriage isn’t only about joining two hearts in holy (or other) matrimony. Apparently it’s also about joining two hearts to community.
Recently Alex and Kristin used their wedding as an opportunity to raise money for charity: water, a non-profit working to bring clean drinking water to developing nations. Instead of cappuccino machines and monogrammed silverware, the couple asked that wedding guests donate $50 to fund an entire well to provide drinking water for 250 people.
Charity: water tracked the campaign on their website, presenting photos of the special day and announcing the final amount raised… to the tune of $6,440. The happy couple included a touching note on the campaign web page to add that personal touch. Thank you for your thoughtfulness and generosity! With your help, we really can make a difference in this world. We can’t wait to see all you in a few months! Love, Kristin and Alex. In addition, guests added comments next to the donated amount such as Filthy water cannot be washed -African Proverb Such a thoughtful gift!
Now switch to another marriage that recently happened using social media channels. For those who haven’t seen the current string of Old Spice commercials, all I can say is, you’re missing out on one of the best social media based ad campaigns in the past, er, year or more (at least). To date, there have been over 1o million views of the original ad. Needless to say, using the word ‘viral’ to describe what Old Spice accomplished is appropriate here.
Old Spice has ditched its stale image of being a product people buy for their dads on Father’s Day to being, well, sexy as all get-out. Recently the revamped Old Spice guy played by Isaiah Mustafa actually proposed to a girl for another guy on Twitter. When you see the video, you might better understand why she accepted.
Now check out the old Old Spice ad from 1971. Why else would women patiently wait for their men to return from sea…
I am wearing white pants today so that must mean summer is here in Vancouver. It actually arrived a little over two weeks ago and surprised us all. The abrupt temperature rise has got me wondering whether organizations use social networks as much when their thoughts turn to backyard barbecues and tall glasses of lemonade. I had assumed we would spend less time on Facebook, Twitter et al during summer months, yet judging from the consistency of posts among my networks (including mostly social media and communications professionals, not-for-profits and a handful of savvy online superheros; celebrities and other), I’ve observed that their tweets or blogs aren’t less frequent it’s just that they are more mango salsa than brown bag lunch.
Take for instance this tweet by benlocker, a UK copywriting agency: “I’m overtweeting. Time for a book and a glass of wine.” Or this one by paulrouke, “I’m attending Manchester Digital Summer Barbecue….”
These days, more people in my professional networks are recommending books to read or sending tweets from the beach or poolside. Another thing I’ve noticed: More people are updating their LinkedIn profiles and changing their Facebook and Twitter profile pics. It’s true that holidays or slow work days can be a good time to get caught up on all those social media chores that have been piling up.
Speaking of which… given that summer is the season of parties and celebrations, why not take the opportunity to show your not-for-profit’s lighter side. Let’s face it, all work and no play makes Jane or _____ (insert not-for-profit name) a dull girl/organization. Here are some ideas to get you started.
Summer in the social media
1) Organize a barbecue or baseball game to celebrate a momentous year of fundraising and serving your community. Maybe things have been challenging and staff need a pick-me-up and something to show they are still valued. Take pictures of the event to post on your website or blog. Tweet about it during and after to show your partners and site visitors your organization’s amazing team spirit.
2) Do you have a summer intern who might like to ‘guest blog’ during the summer months? Could be a cool way to infuse the organization with some fresh ideas and new perspective.
3) Offer your Twitter followers or Facebook fans some free stuff. A little while ago Ethical Bean was tweeting about certain locations its followers could go to on a Friday to take home a free bag of their Fair Trade coffee. Rustle up some in-kind donations from local businesses; use an online contest as an opportunity to share your organization’s story and the community you serve.
Friday afternoon antics
Two whole hours left till the weekend; it’s hot, the air conditioner is broken again or blowing colder than the legal limit. I know I’ll…
1) Visit Twitterer, type in summer or vacation and see what others are up to.
2) Join an online parade with my Twitter followers.
3) Sign up to be a friend of the cephalopod mollusk that predicted the 2010 FIFA World Cup winners. Btw, the oracle octopus has 170,000 Facebook friends. And you thought you were special.
Coming to the end of a year makes me yearn for lists. Not just Christmas lists, 2010 to-do lists, and New Year’s resolutions (a bit early for that…), but lists of things we saw from not-for-profits over the past year that made us think, wow. Over the next month or so we’ll be bringing you our top five lists in a few categories related to social media.
Whether you’re wearing toe socks or those comfy hand-knitted slipper socks with the leather soles that you buy at the season’s craft fairs (or your boyfriend’s or girlfriend’s woolen lumberjack socks), these lists will be sure to knock your socks off. So, here goes…our first list of video picks.
These days with a little will and collaborative effort it’s relatively easy for not-for-profits to produce and post their own videos. Tech is cheap and amateur videographers abound. The difficulty is in creating something that cuts to the essence of what your organization does and in a way that is slightly edgy, but not annoyingly so. Short (not insubstantial) and visually arresting…no three-ring-circuses. The other challenge of course is getting people to download it, another ball of wax altogether.
Go Small has come up with a killer list of five videos we simply LOVE. Please note we almost never use caps! Or exclamation marks.
Last week Go Small attended Timeraiser, a Canada-wide event that brings together not-for-profits and those looking to volunteer. Combine this with a silent auction of local artwork where people bid volunteer hours instead of money, adding to it wine, good food, music and conversation, and you have a winning evening.
Timeraiser was founded in 2002 by a group of friends who wanted to create a way for people to find meaningful, relevant volunteer gigs. For the past seven years they have succeeded at making volunteering not only fun and exciting, but sexy as well. In their video they refer to the event as “speed dating for volunteerism.” There’s an exciting buzz to the event that makes you feel as though giving back to your community is cool.
Operating in six cities across Canada, Timeraiser uses both traditional print advertising in the form of brochures distributed around the city and social media such as YouTube. In addition, their user-friendly website takes visitors through an easy step-by-step process of how to raise a little time for a cause you believe in.
The city’s second annual event was sold-out, which means potentially hundreds of hours will be offered up to Vancouver charities in the areas of arts and culture, social services, health, youth…. A big plus is that participating artists are paid in dollars for their artwork. Since its creation, Timeraiser has invested $295,000 in the careers of emerging artists and generated over 45,000 volunteer hours.
Here are photos of the event courtesy of photographer Marlis Funk from imagingbymarlis.com.
The other day I was having a conversation with my sister about how social media could be used by an organization to fortify connections between a community and its customs and traditions, while showing those outside the community the power and continued relevance of these traditions.
She told me about Dr. Heather Castleden’s research work which was undertaken in collaboration with the Huu-ay-aht First Nations. As part of this research, she co-developed a digital story which tells of the place of her own story within the richness of Huu-ay-aht First Nations stories she came to know.
“Digital Storytelling is the modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling,” says Leslie Rule of the Digital Storytelling Association. “Digital stories derive their power by weaving images, music, narrative and voice together, thereby giving deep dimension and vivid color to characters, situations, experiences, and insights,” she adds.
I like Dr. Castleden’s idea expressed in her digital story (after the African saying, it takes a village to raise a child) that it takes a Nation to raise a researcher. In other words, it isn’t the academic at the centre of the story anymore or the one with all (if any!) of the answers.
Digital storytelling, like the technique of “photovoice” (see Go Small’s March 31st post called Giving Ugandan girls a “photovoice”), gives subjects more power to be the creators of their stories and hopefully influence policy decisions being made that have a direct impact on them and their communities.
With widespread layoffs, budget cuts, foreclosures and a generally depressed (who wouldn’t be) economy, not-for-profits are getting creative like never before at raising money.
United Way’s Give 5 viral fundraising campaign for vital services and programs for families most affected by the economic downturn is one example that proves the age-old adage that when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Yet, in this instance it feels more appropriate to say, the tough get creative.
Fact is, at no other time in history has it been easier in terms of the availability of low-cost social media tools for not-for-profits to reach audiences. Yet at the same time, given that many donors are tightening their belts and that there are many other organizations out there using the same channels to reach people, it is also one of the most difficult times for organizations to attain their fundraising targets.
Down $800,000 in funds raised from last year, the United Way of Northeast Florida is feeling the pinch of the economic downturn as are the communities they serve. For that reason they’re targeting a new generation of donors who might never have donated to the organization. Using social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, United Way is broadening its reach in hopes of generating interest from 20 to 30 year-olds looking to make a difference without breaking their piggy-banks.
This viral campaign is asking new donors to donate as little as $5 and then to e-mail the link to five friends. Being asked to give a small sum is viewed in this instance as no small thing because that $5 might be used to help a homeless family pay for an evening meal. With that kind of payback, it’s hard not to give.
We’re not leaving the continent of Africa quite yet. An inspiring project came to my attention from Uganda, Rwanda’s neighbour to the north.
The project is called ZoomUganda and it uses the little-known though increasing prevalent technique called “photovoice” to bring attention to Matale, a community in southern Uganda where more than half the children have lost one or both parents to HIV/AIDS.
Created by Caroline C. Wang and Mary Ann Burris in 1992 to enable rural women of Yunnan Province, China to have a say in policymaking affecting them, “photovoice” enables individuals who are typically subjects, to be creators, as they document their world.
Sponsored by the Harambee Centre in Portland, Oregon, ZoomUganda involves 12 girls who were given 12 cameras and 24 hours to tell their stories. Another part of the project was for the girls to keep journals wherein they captured their hopes and dreams. Proceeds from the project will benefit St. Andrew’s Secondary School in Matale, Uganda.
Photovoice is a powerful tool for organizations, whether working in the Global South or in the Deep South, to help citizens take control over how the world perceives them.
If the technique seems a good fit for your organization, then build on your photovoice project by integrating social media such as video and other interactive web capabilities to seriously engage online visitors and connect them to your organization’s vision for social change.
Remember that–where social media is concerned–there are many ways to tell a story.
You know, we talk a lot about using all the different social media tools that are available to not-for-profits, tools like Flickr, Twitter and YouTube. But with the plethora of Web 2.0 doodads out there, it’s easy to lose focus and to start creating and maintaining your various accounts for their own sake. How many of us have discovered that our Facebook friendships and updates seem to have taken over our lives until we’ve forgotten why we signed up in the first place?
So here’s something to remember: whatever part of the social media beast you’re using needs to be integrally connected to your organization’s website or, in other words, your home base. Your website is the official “spokesperson” of your cause, the dependable voice that brings together all the Tweets, blogs and video playlists, and synthesizes them into a harmonious whole.
Now, I could go on forever and ever about this, but instead of boring all of you (and myself), I want to point you to a fantastic example of a website that seamlessly combines all sorts of social media. The Men Who Killed Me is a brand new book of photographs and testimonials from survivors of the Rwandan genocide. The proceeds from this book, which will be hitting retailers across Canada in April, will be donated to Mukomeze, a charitable organization established to improve the lives of girls and women who have survived sexual violence.
The Men Who Killed Me, edited by Anne-Marie de Brouwer and Sandra Ka Hon Chu, photographs by Samer Muscati
It goes without saying that this website and book are extraordinary, but what makes it a picture-perfect example of social media use is how organic and vital each component is to the overall message. When you’re browsing through, take note of how the authors have used Flickr, YouTube and the blog to drive home the reminder that the Rwandan genocide must not be forgotten.
I’ll leave you with just this one thing: a video from The Men Who Killed Me, showing survivors dancing with joy in Kigali. It doesn’t get much better than this.
I know this isn’t the kind of serious social media fare we typically present on Go Small (and, you better believe we’re serious!), but I thought I’d make an exception for St. Patrick’s Day. Although I’m not Irish, I do enjoy a pint of Guinness on occasion along with a woeful Irish song like this one.
To shed light on a little-known and increasingly prevalent social issue, CANGRANDS, a Canadian organization supporting grandmothers, grandfathers, and kinship families as they struggle to keep or develop family ties has released a video on YouTube (thanks to the support of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration).
Originally airing on CTV’sW-FIVE, the two-part programme reveals the roadblocks grandparents who parent their children’s children encounter from living on fixed incomes, addressing their grandchildren’s health concerns (e.g. sexual abuse, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Attention Deficit Disorder) to dealing with their own health problems.
In the video, Paul Muldoon who produced a study on the financial pressures of raising grandchildren talks about the financial toll on grandparents. “These grandparents are saving us as taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he says. “And they’re doing that out of a sense of commitment, they’re doing that out of a sense of love and we need to be there to help and support them.”
PART 1
PART 2
According to the W-FIVE documentary, 65,000 children in Canada are being raised by kin, while in the US, the Census Bureau’s 2006 American Community Survey shows that more than six million grandparents live with grandchildren. In both countries, the numbers are increasing.
Making use of professionally produced TV (or other) videos about your organization (with permission!) is a nifty and cost-effective way to further your organization’s message and goals. Remember that it’s good to recycle and reuse. Way to go CANGRANDS!
