You may have heard of Tweetsgiving, the 48-hour event created by nonprofit Epic Change that encourages participants to express our thanks using online tools and at live events. Launched last year, this year’s event ends in a few hours but has already made an impact.

The video above shows how EpicChange, with a recent grant from IdeaBlob, has been making a difference at the primary school in Tanzania where last year’s TweetsGiving classroom was built. (If you’re up early on Thanksgiving, see if there’s a live stream about the event on Ustream.)

What am I thankful for? Thousands of things. A few of them:

• Family and friends

• Bobby

• Casey

• Traveling Geeks

• Heroes, like Mama Lucy

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Learn about social media, PHP & WordPress on the Web

Guest post by Katrina Heppler
envisionGood.tv

We met up with Jon Bischke, founder of eduFire, in San Francisco to learn about the launch of eduFire’s new Tech Channel, an online video learning platform that provides live, interactive video classes in social media, PHP, WordPress and other tech areas.

In this video interview, Jon describes the new Tech Channel’s offerings and tells us how eduFire is using social media throughout the company’s platform. Continue after the jump for a full transcript of the conversation.

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Lately I’ve been noticing a social media spin on making charitable donations in your community, region or state.  

Here are three recent examples.

I Live Here, I Give Here

The site I Live Here, I Give Here is designed to draw attention to giving to local nonprofits in Austin, Texas. According to the site:

“Austin is no doubt a caring community. But we don’t act on our values by giving more to charitable organizations. National studies consistently find that Austinites give far less to charitable causes than people in other cities. In fact, Austin is ranked 48th out of the 50 largest cities in the nation in per capita giving.”

The mission of the I Live Here, I Give Here campaign is to change that. The partners are a mix of local foundations and corporations. The site lists local nonprofits and links to a donation page.

GiveMN

GiveMN is a new online resource that hopes to encourage more Minnesotans to give and help create a stronger nonprofit community for Minnesota. It is designed for both individuals and organizations. Individuals can browse the site and find local nonprofits and make a donation online. Or, if they want, they can launch their own fundraiser for an organization. For nonprofits, GiveMN offers simple, secure tools to achieve their goals. The site is powered by Razoo, a giving platform.

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When most businesses and non-profits start using social media, they start with small talk with their communities. They politely reply to tweets, express appreciation to donors, respond as quickly as possible to customer support issues, and generally try to add value to their network.

But all to often, they fail to move beyond the small talk and create meaningful discussions that their communities are dying to have.

Then, after a few months pass, they express some level of disillusionment about the value of social media for their business, and eventually retreat to passive monitoring and pleasant tweeting with current fans. Meanwhile, the board members wonder why being nice wasn’t enough.

Engaged conversations

My clients are often surprised when I first ask them: “So, what are you going to talk about with your customers?”

They’ve spent resources building up their profiles and blogs and have spent a few weeks tweeting and replying to comments. But when I ask this question, they get a little confused. “Well, we’re responding to comments and answering questions that folks have on Twitter. We think we’re being responsive and engaged. Aren’t we?”

It’s more than small talk. I’m seeing organizations starting to understand that there’s more to engagement than simply talking. And that when folks are truly engaged, the community blows the bugle, not the company.

The American Cancer society has a great conversation strategy. They’ve created an entire community around achieving victory over cancer by talking about “creating a world with more birthdays.” These conversations are both engaging and meaningful because they touch on a basic desire we all have: To celebrate a happy life.

Share Our Strength has one of the most passionate communities I’ve met. They care profoundly about the stake that they’ve planted deeply in the ground: End childhood hunger by 2015. This mission is immediate, heartfelt and simply stated. It’s the prime point of their conversation strategy.

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There are just six days to go before TweetsGiving! Next week, participants will share what they are grateful for through Twitter and other online media and attend gratitude parties around the world.

People will donate to a shared cause in honor of that for which they are most grateful. Funds raised will go to support the work of Mama Lucy Kampton (@MamaLucy), a change maker who has transformed her community in Arusha, Tanzania, through her school, Shepherd’s Junior.

Learn more and show your gratitude!

Scheduled for Nov. 24–26 (Tuesday to Thursday), the 48-hour event created by Epic Change will encourage participants to express their thanks using online tools and at live events. In honor of the people and things that make them grateful, guests will be invited to give to a common cause at events held across the globe.

Why TweetsGiving?

Last year, funds from TweetsGiving helped build a classroom in Tanzania. This year, the Epic Change team is working on building a technology lab there. 

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Wildlife Direct harnesses social networks to ‘secure a future for wildlife’

Last week I wrote about a pair of surveys that looked at social media and nonprofits. One came to the conclusion that social media was a waste of time; the other talked about strategic implications on how to be successful.

If you want to be successful using social media in your fundraising strategy, remember:

Paula Kahumbu of WildlifeDirect

• Build your network before you need it. Don’t have your first interaction be a request for money
• Focus on engagement and relationship building all the time. You don’t have to be doing it at hyper level at the time, but remember relationship building doesn’t have an on and off switch.
• Story telling is important – as much as can creatively tell a compelling story, the more success you will have.
• Should be part of a multi-channel effort — they all work together. What’s important is figuring out the right amount of time to invest in particular channels.
• Focus on the outcomes and keep reporting on the work you are doing.

Last year, I made a prediction about social media as part of the fundraising mix and I still feel strongly about it:

I believe social media will become as ubiquitous to development offices as is the phone, direct mail, and email. In the next decades, we’ll see rapid adoption of social media for many nonprofit purposes, including fundraising and as gen y’s come into their own as donors. Some of the new tools now being launched to create a single profile that can be used across social networks will as analysts predict make social networks like air. We’re still in the early stages of social media as in the early days of the web and online fundraising, so, we are in the “it’s hype, and not going to last” phase. We’re still in transition and the transition will take many years, but I believe fundraising with social media tools will not just be a niche source of income or novelty.

Peter Dietz, founder of Social Actions, pulled out his crystal ball last year and wrote: “individuals will come to your organization with the expectation of being full partners in your work, not just dollar wells to be tapped when cash is needed. Donations will be a consequence of meaningful engagement, not a measurement of it.”

So, when nonprofits use the best practices around meaningful engagement they see results. Last month at PopTech, I heard Paula Kahumbu, a PopTech Fellow, talk about her organization’s work and use of social media.

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Bread for the World spells out the opportunities for working together

For the past few days I’ve been hip deep in social media policies, social media guidelines — the increasingly common rules of the road that companies and nonprofits are laying down for how

In a perfect world, organizations could issue a policy like this: Oh, behave!

Or, as Microsoft’s policy famously puts it: Don’t be stupid.

But these days, as more employees are Twittering and posting Facebook updates both at work and at home, it makes sense for businesses and nonprofits to offer them guidance about what’s acceptable behavior and what crosses the line. Some companies, like Best Buy, have said the landscape is changing so quickly that they don’t want to commit the guidelines to paper. But many others are adopting written policies.

In the long run, that may be good news for employees: Mashable reported recently that 8% of U.S. companies have sacked “social media miscreants.” (What Mashable calls miscreants I would call employees with a naive streak.)

Still, the temptation remains for nonprofits and businesses to crack down on social media use by letting the lawyers and out-of-touch managers write the policies, as all too many news organizations have been doing.

Bread for the World’s new policy

In looking over the scores of social media policies littering the landscape, one has risen to the top for its enlightened view that social media use is an opportunity rather than a threat. Perhaps surprisingly, it comes courtesy of Bread for the World, a Christian charity seeking to end hunger at home and abroad.

I’ve republished Bread for the World’s social media guidelines on Socialmedia.biz (with permission), and posted it as a downloadable PDF (4 pages).

A few of the highlights:

• Bread for the World’s policy properly breaks down the participants into two stakeholder groups: those who represent the organizations and individuals who use social media outside of an official capacity.

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Last week, for a business trip to New York, I made my maiden voyage on Virgin America, largely because of the availability of wi-fi on the flight. I generally bring a stack of magazines or a good book, but for this trip I needed an Internet connection to finish my presentation.

So I was tickled to learn that I just made the beginning of Google’s Free Wifi for the Holidays program. The flights were fine, the connectivity was there (although very slow, thanks to lots of people taking advantage of the promotion) and the only hitch was that the power plugs didn’t work for my MacBook Pro (c’mon Virgin, I mean, really!).

The best part, though, was being able to donate to one of three social cause organizations and have Google make a matching grant. The program is in force through Jan. 15, so go ahead and donate — you don’t even need to fly!

Click one of the blue donate buttons below to make an impact and give back this holiday season. Here is how Google’s Free Wifi program describes these projects:

One Economy Corp.

One Economy Corporation is a global nonprofit that uses innovative approaches to deliver the power of technology and information to low-income people.

One Economy has launched on-the-ground programs in 42 U.S. states, Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. Its digital inclusion programs expand broadband into low-income areas and deliver free or low-cost Internet access and affordable computers. To date, One Economy has brought affordable broadband to more than 300,000 Americans.

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Improving your presentation skills from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

If you give presentations or speeches in public — ranging from a nonprofit workshop panel to a keynote about a social cause — chances are that you could benefit from sharpening your presentation skills.

I met Danielle Daly, co-founder of Rexi Media, at Blogworld Expo last month and was immediately impressed with how she and the Rexi Media team are helping to enhance the communication and presentation skills of executives and managers at major businesses and smaller organizations. In this 6-minute video interview, Danielle discusses 5 ways to make your presentation skills more effective.

A couple of days ago Rexi Media released an update to its already popular iPhone app, Presenter Pro, which lets you bone up on your presentation skills during your spare time (cost: $1.99). Presenter Pro focuses on 5 areas for enhancing presentation skills:

1) Body language: This covers areas such as effective gestures, facial expressions, eye contact, cultural gestures, use of passion, visualization, descriptive gestures, and others.

2) Vocal variety: How to add interest to your speaking style, how to sound more confident, how to add ingredients such as articulation, inflection, rate, pauses, changes in inflection and volume, and so on.

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