Putting a personal face to some of the world’s most pressing issues

TEDxChange, an event co-hosted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and TED, takes place Sept. 20. TEDxChange marks the anniversary of the Millennium Development Goals.

Ten years in, the question remains: Where do we stand in the work to save and improve lives around the world? And what will the future hold?

The future isn’t fixed. We can all have a hand in making a better world. To coincide with TEDxChange and the 10th anniversary of the Millennium Development Goals, the Gates Foundation is asking you the following question: What is the future we will make?

They want you to help put a personal face to some of the world’s most pressing issues and envision a future where every person has the opportunity to live a healthy and productive life.

To participate, follow these four steps:

1. Download and print the sign
2. Personalize the sign with your own message. (Remember: Your sign must relate to one of the Millennium Development Goals to be included.)
3. Upload your photo to the foundation’s Flickr group.
4. Join the conversation on our community page.

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How to keep data collection from being an onerous task

Lately I’ve been obsessed with the idea of SpreadSheet Aerobics, an actionable social media measurement strategy that is fit and trim and light on its feet. When I coach nonprofits on tactics and talk about measurement, their facial expressions change from happy to annoyed. Collecting data is often viewed as an onerous task. It doesn’t have to be that way.

We know that it’s good practice to establish SMART objectives for your social media strategy and identify the audience before you execute. You need to think through your content and engagement strategy. You should also be thinking about what to measure and set up an efficient method for collecting that data. And, of course, making the time to think about what the data means.

We get so overloaded by meaningless data collection that we’re exhausted before we get to do the fun part: making sense out of it. I don’t try to measure everything. I find it overwhelming and a lot of it won’t help me refine my strategy. Spreadsheet aerobics is actionable data. What does that mean?

• Measurement should inform specific decisions and/or actions.
• Do not measure everything, but do measure what is most important to your objectives.
• The data you gather should help you learn.

Avoid drive-by analysis

Another pitfall is doing “drive by” analysis. Let’s take Facebook Pages as an example. Rather than download a spreadsheet of the most important data points for a month from Facebook’s Insights analytics tools and comparing it against content, engagement and outreach strategies, administrators glance at the summary insights on their page and draw subjective conclusions.

Avoid this measurement-as-therapy trap. When we see the green arrows pointing up and the numbers look good, we might think, “They like me, they really like me.” But you can’t really put that data into context and learn from it.

Here’s my spreadsheet daily and monthly routine. I grab the monthly daily data from the Insights tool (old version) and download into a spreadsheet. Out of the 25 or metrics I could look at, I only collect the following metrics:

• Total interactions
• Likes
• Comments
• New fans (Likes)
• Unsubscribes
• Page views
• Photo/video views (optional if I’m testing as content strategy)

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Over the past few weeks I’ve received a number of questions about the ways administrators can update their Facebook Page. This topic also comes up a lot during the Facebook Foundations webinars I do with Charity How To.

So I thought it might be useful to outline the various ways users can update their Facebook Pages.

On Page as Page

1The most obvious way to post to your Facebook Page is as the Page. This requires simply being logged into Facebook and, assuming you’re an admin of the Page, posting to the Page. Admins can share videos, links or photos and make comments on that shared content in the status window.

On Page as Profile

2In some cases, particularly during events, you might want to post to your Page using your personal profile. If you are not an admin of the Page, this simply requires posting a status update as you would on any other Page or Profile. If you are an admin of the Page, you’ll need to be removed as an admin in order to post (make sure you have multiple admins on your Page so someone can add you back!).

On Profile as Page

3Now let’s say you want to post an update about your Page but share it with all your friends. The best way to do this is to tag the Page in a status update on your Profile. This will create a link to your Page within the update. Note: Updates only appear on Pages that you do not administrator. The assumption is that Page admins can post updates on their Page directly and don’t need the ability to tag through their profile.

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Dangling Feet, Kerala; Courtesy of Taylor Davidson on Flickr

It’s shocking: The floods in Pakistan are affecting more than six times the number of people affected by the Haiti earthquake. I’ve been looking for ways to give back to help Pakistan. Where to give, where to donate, where to direct people. I came across a few great lists and posts, especially one from The Women’s Conference blog.

There is a lot of dialogue about why more people haven’t stepped up to help the people of Pakistan, especially this article from the BBC, which points to everything from the media portrayal of Pakistan to threats of terrorism. But let’s be honest, people hurting need the help of those who have the ability to help. Those who are displaced have nothing. Think about what hardship they are experiencing and then please consider taking a moment to donate what you can or help spread the word.

The flooding – which has now affected 20 million people, 8 million of whom need urgent aid – washed away infrastructure and has destroyed much of the country’s farming industry, which employs almost half of the country’s workers.

Several ways to help the Pakistanis

Pakistan needs our help. Here are a few ways you can help:

• UNICEF: 6 million children have been affected by the floods. Help UNICEF provide them with water, food and medical services.

• Red Cross: Red Cross is on the ground, providing relief supplies, mobilizing relief workers and providing financial resources to those in need.

• Save the Children: Save the Children is rushing essential supplies to children and their families.

• Oxfam: Oxfam is providing hygiene, household and clean-up kits to families in Pakistan.

Text your donation from your mobile phone

Here are two ways to donate via texting:

• Text “swat” to 50555 — this sends a $10 donation to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees that will go toward providing tents, food, clothing, and clean water. (Reply with “yes” to confirm the gift.)
• Text FLOODS to 864233 — this helps get relief directly to the children of Pakistan by sending a $10 donation to UNICEF.

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Evernote, Wikipanion & GoDocs should be in your arsenal

Target audience: Students, educators, nonprofits, social change organizations, mobile diehards.

By Jessica Haswell
Socialbrite staff

School just got easier with this collection of the top 10 apps that you can’t hit the classrooms without. Having recently left the classroom (Cornell 2010 — woot!), these are some tools that I definitely wish I had. Add them to the list of Top 10 Student Tools for Fall that we ran last month.

Evernote: A revolution in note-taking

1This app is revolutionizing notes as we know it. Evernote is a mobile and web sync friendly, media-rich note-taking machine. The basic function of the app is note-taking with the ability to add voice, photos, location and tags as well as the option to share with friends. The most exciting feature of this app is the Evernote trunk, which is filled with all sorts of valuable tools that are sure to help you excel in the classroom. Platforms: iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm Pre.

Wikipanion: Who needs a textbook?

2Who needs a textbook when you have Wikipedia’s brain child, Wikipanion? This app has really high ratings – because it’s simply a great app. You can access open source content on any topic imaginable, an essential tool for any class. Platform: iPhone.

GoDocs: Essential for your Google docs

3View, download and send your Google docs from your iPhone or iPad with this $3.99 app. Google docs are the go-to collaboration tool for students, and GoDocs will make collaboration even easier. The only thing it doesn’t do is let you edit docs. Platforms: iPhone, iPad.

Cliqset: Consolidate your stream

4Sharing, discovering and discussing on mobile and the Web just got easier: Follow your streams on Facebook, Twitter, Buzz — 70 social networks all told — in one place with Cliqset. This app is sure to help students simplify their lives and help professors keep students engaged. Platform: iPhone.

MyHomework: Digital planner in your palm

5Make sure you hand in all of the assignments on time – download this app. MyHomework makes it easy to keep track of, and color code all of your homework, classes, projects and tests. The app will also notify you when you have late and upcoming assignments by numbering them on your application icon. Buh-bye, paper planner. Platform: iPhone.

Rate My Profs: Students strike back

6The website has been around for a while — more than 10 million comments about 1 million profs — and now there is a free app available for this. Gotta admit, I love it. Rate My Professor was my bible for finding some of my favorite classes at school and avoiding some of the worst. Democracy run amok? Who cares! Platform: iPhone.

Kindle: Save money on textbooks

7Digital textbooks are for sure the way to save. With over 6,000 textbooks available for the Web, mobile and tablets, Amazon’s Kindle will save you about $60 on your average textbook purchase. Multiply that by the amount of textbooks you buy in one semester — that’s a lot of extra spending money. Platforms: iPhone, iPad.

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And download these 3 flyers on tools & platforms for social change

Last night I gave another in the series of Mobilize Your Cause mini-camps at the Hub SoMa in San Francisco. It went well, with representatives from Women’s Film Institute, CBS Interactive, Small Act and a number of startups and consultancies coming by to do a deep dive into how to use social media to move the needle for your cause or organization.

My partner and colleague Sloane Berrent wasn’t in town for the joint presentation, but Pamela Hawley, founder and CEO of UniversalGiving, came by and offered some great thoughts about the importance of stepping back and identifying your organization’s story — its core value proposition — before diving into the toolsets. Her recent trip to the White House with 50 other social entrepreneurs drew a number of questions from people eager to connect with the social enterprise community.

Handouts on social action hubs, mobile apps & more

For the event, Socialbrite produced three new or modified flyers — download them for free and repost on your site!:

• 12 Social Action Hubs — Online communities and crowdsource platforms (shortener: bit.ly/12socialhubs — PDF)

• 10 Mobile Apps for Social Good (shortener: bit.ly/10mobileapps — PDF)

• 12 Steps to Mobilize Your Cause (shortener: bit.ly/12steps-flyer — PDF)

A presentation to get the ball rolling

The presentation was intended not as a comprehensive survey of social media tools or strategies, but as a way to introduce concepts that can be plumbed more deeply in the weeks ahead. In the main, it consisted of three main parts:

• Case studies — successful cause campaigns by Equality California, Tweet for a Cure, Grassroots Mapping, charity:water, Greenpeace, Egypt’s Women & Memory Forum and Nawaa, a group of political activists in Tunisia. (What they did with Google Earth blew me away!)

• 12 steps to activate your supporters, starting with listening and ending with real-world events.

• Tools and action hubs for social change, including Google Earth, Creative Commons, Google Sidewiki, widgets, word cloud visualizations and more.

A technical glitch: Any theories?

We spent a half hour before the session began tackling a technical glitch I had never seen in 10 years of presentations: My videos were playing fine in Keynote on my MacBook Pro, but when the image was projected onto the wall, only the QuickTime still image was visible — nothing that “moved” was displayed through the projector during the entire evening. Which threw me for a loop, since my presentations are intensely media-rich. Have you ever seen that before? What do you think could have caused that?

Despite that, it was a great gathering and I hope to be back at the Hub soon! If you’d like a Mobilize Your Cause workshop held at your organization, drop us a line.

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Probably the most intriguing addition to the conference landscape is the upcoming inaugural CrowdConf, the first conference that focuses on the emerging field of crowdsourcing and the future of distributed work. Researchers, technologists, outsourcing experts, legal scholars and artists will gather Oct. 4 in San Francisco to discuss how crowdsourcing is beginning to transform the democratizing and flattening of the global labor market.

I hope to make it there, though a planned Air Force blogging expedition to Hawaii may prevent it.

Lukas Biewald, CEO of CrowdFlower, is spearheading the creation of the conference, which includes a call for papers with a deadline nine days from today. Here are the details:

When: Monday, Oct. 4, 2010, 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m.

Where: The St. Regis Hotel, 123 3rd St., San Francisco

Tickets: $350 before Sept. 13, with discounts for students and researchers. Register here.

Speakers include: Tim Ferriss, Author, “The 4-Hour Work Week”; Sharon Chirella, VP, Amazon Mechanical Turk; Maynard Webb, CEO, LiveOps; Jonathan Zittrain, author and Professor of Law and Computer Science, Harvard.

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If you haven’t heard already, Facebook has launched a location-based “check in” app similar to FourSquare.

It’s called “Places” , and as you’ll see in the video above, Facebook seeks to encourage serendipitous meetings between Facebook friends at the places they hang out.

How can my nonprofit use Places?

Places is a location-based check-in app for mobile devices. Think FourSquare but with deeper and more developed friendship networks. With that, you should start your Facebook Places marketing strategy by reading four posts by Joe Waters:

• 5 Reasons Not to Give Up on Location-Based [Cause] Marketing
• Foursquare for Charities: Live Discussion
• How Nonprofit Groups Can Benefit From Foursquare
• Foursquare ‘Checkin for Charity’ Hits 135k Checkins, Raises $15k

Also, see this slick demo on how Facebook Places works on the iPhone.

How will your nonprofit use Facebook Places?

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Every year I pick a new conference (or two) that I really want to attend because I’ve heard it will blow my mind, because I want to connect with new people, because I know it’s good to stretch the mind and the soul. This year, it’s SOCAP.

In looking into the conference, I stumbled upon a post by my friend Emily Goligoski about a contest where you can win a pass to the conference. Yes, the contest has some element of voting but it’s not everything (thankfully) and regardless of if I win, I like the question they’re asking.

The Social Capital Markets Conference is a gathering of investors, entrepreneurs, and innovators at the intersection of money and meaning. SOCAP has spent the last two years defining the social enterprise movement. This year, more than 1,200 investors, donors, entrepreneurs, and innovators will decide: What’s Next?

A recent report by Hope Consulting on Money for Good revealed there is a $120 billion untapped market of individual investors looking to make a positive environmental and social impact with their dollars. With deserving entrepreneurs looking for funds to make that impact, the challenge is to discover:

What’s next? How will social enterprise unlock the $120 billion market opportunity for impact investment?

SOCAP will be exploring this question throughout the conference, but they want to hear from you.

The challenge? Tell them (in 500 words or less) what’s next in social enterprise to unlock the $120 billion market opportunity for individual impact investment, and you could win a scholarship to this year’s SOCAP, valued at $1,195, as well as the opportunity to be published in TriplePundit, an innovative new media company pushing the conversation forward about sustainable business in the 21st century.

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