How these nonprofits cracked the code with engaging campaigns that turned followers into donors

Post by Zoe Allen

Social media is proving to be the future of nonprofit outreach. No other platform offers the same huge global reach for promoting awareness of important issues that too often elude the public’s attention.

Some nonprofits are doing a stellar job in creating social media campaigns that are engaging, inspiring – and effective. Below are some outstanding examples of nonprofits that have run social media campaigns that moved the needle to further their cause.

Here are eight top cause campaigns to be inspired by … and to learn lessons from.

Make-A-Wish’s YouTube Channel

1The Make-A-Wish Foundation has become a household name in recent years with its unique goal of fulfilling the wishes of ill and vulnerable children, from visiting Disneyland to meeting celebrities. They have their solid social media presence to thank for their success, too.

Make-A-Wish is all about personal stories and experiences, which makes compelling content that people really want to know about. It’s also a major driver of converting supporters to donors. The organization uses YouTube videos to show the world these interesting stories, driving support for their cause. As a result of their inspiring content, they have grown into a household brand and can help thousands of children fulfill their wishes.

Explore Make-A-Wish’s YouTube channel.

This video by WATERisLIFE has garnered more than 7 million views.

WATERisLIFE: #firstworldproblems

2Here’s a great example of how you can use hashtags, images or ideas that are already popular across social media to further your nonprofit.

WATERisLIFE used the already viral hashtag #firstworldproblems to undergird an emotion-laden video. In the video, people in dire, life-threatening situations, such as having no access to clean water, repeat common “first world problems.” It highlighted the privilege of the hashtag users and the power to use social media to do true good.

The organization ensured that this popular hashtag, even after its campaign had ended, would continue to remind people that they could help others. In addition to using this hashtag, their First World Problems Anthems video was also shared and viewed thousands of times.

Project Life Jacket

3Project Life Jacket used a unique visual idea to catch their supporters’ attention. Three Swiss organizations (The Voice of Thousands, Borderfree and Schwizerchruz) interview nine refuges who had travelled across the Mediterranean, then beautifully illustrated their stories on used life jackets that had washed up on beaches.

The campaign reminded supporters that each refugee was a person with a past and a story — and more than their refugee status. When supporters understood the refugees’ stories, their empathetic response turned into action. Like Make-A-Wish, the approach shows how well supporters react to personal stories on social media and the power of visual content on these platforms.

Take a look at the Facebook page for Project Life Jacket.

truth: #BigTobaccoBeLike

4This campaign shows the power of social media for spreading awareness of important issues, rather than just for increasing donations. Using a popular Internet phrase (“be like”), truth aimed to show the issues with social smoking and dispel the myth that smoking was acceptable if it was irregular. It explained how even if you only smoke at parties, you are still supporting companies that profit off fueling illness and addiction.

Social media has the power to destroy myths and spread the truth.

truth also leveraged the power of YouTube influencers, working with popular faces to produce videos that played off the kind of short-form content that propelled the popularity of the now defunct platform Vine. They leveraged humorous content along with the millions-strong audiences of these famous faces.

Like WATERisLIFE’s campaign, truth showed that using the trends and audience that is already out there is very important in social media marketing. Take a look at truth’s Twitter page, which has 126,000 followers.

WaterAid: #giveashit

5WaterAid’s campaign aimed to make a serious issue more fun. They asked popular figures to personalize and share a poop emoji and created a free app so anyone could create a personalized poop emoji. It aimed to add a more lighthearted tone to raise awareness about a serious issue that affects millions of people’s lives worldwide.

This campaign shows the importance of creativity and participation to engage your supporters and encourage donations. If something is fun, humorous or interesting, people are much more likely to share it, spreading the reach of your message and growing your donor base.

Read more about the campaign or download the app.

World Wildlife Fund: #endangeredemoji

6After World Wildlife Fund discovered that 17 endangered animals had popular corresponding emojis, it sought to translate the popularity of the emojis into donations. WWF encouraged supporters to retweet an image on Twitter, which in turn signed them up to donate 10 pence (about 14 cents) every time they posted one of the endangered emojis.

Like WaterAid’s campaign, it shows how powerful the use of emojis can be to engage supporters. Again, this project harnessed innovation and creativity to make engaging with a nonprofit more interesting for their donors.

Visit WWF’s Twitter page, or read more on the WWF website.

National Trust: #NTchallenge

7National Trust taps into the passion of its supporters and their beautiful photography to spread the word about its beautiful sites. They regularly run weekly challenges urging supporters to upload images, tagged to #NTchallenge, that revolve around a theme, such as “places that transport you back in time.” They repost the images on their profiles and choose winners for each category.

Like many of the other campaigns here, the #NTchallenge aims to make spreading awareness about their cause fun and interesting for their supporters. By showing how beautiful these places are, they can encourage more visitors, earning more donations, which can then be spent on the upkeep of their sites.

National Trust leveraged the beauty of imagery on Instagram for this project — see their profile. Again, this shows how important it is to use the individual strengths of each platform.

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

8One of the most successful social media fundraising projects of all time, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge had thousands of participants, gained national press coverage and raised millions for the ALS Association.

Once again, this project focused on making fundraising fun, and engaging supporters in an interesting way. This challenge, spread across multiple social media platforms, dared supporters to throw a bucket of iced water over their heads and share the video online. As well as spreading awareness, the participants would then donate to the ALS Association and encourage friends to repeat the challenge and do the same. The prospect of humorous videos from friends allowed the campaign to spread quickly.

Read more on the ALS Association website.

Wrapping up

These campaigns show the importance of establishing a recognizable brand for your campaign. Try using hashtags to do this and to allow the campaign to spread quickly.

The list also shows the genius of using features already available or using a trend or hashtag that is already popular – such as in WaterIsLife’s #firstworldproblems campaign. You should also make sure you’re tapping into the possibilities of multiple channels with their different content types and audiences.

If you want to know more about social media for nonprofits, you can read our Ultimate Guide to Social Media for Nonprofits.

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As many of my nonprofit communications colleagues do this time of year,  I look back on my year and wonder how I will move forward more purposefully and meaningfully in my communications work this new year.

Having been fortunate enough to do this work for over 15 years, I sometimes skip over connecting the bottom-line – the ‘do-gooder’ part – and go straight into the “doing” part of the work.

Now, I’m clear that the work I do contributes to my organization meeting its mission-driven goals. That said, there’s something about the everyday pressures of editorial deadlines, meeting prep, and endless email follow-up, that can turn all that good work into a routine; leaving little time to reflect on how that work actually helps to change people’s lives.

Our communications work can at times feel very removed from the programmatic on-the-ground mission work of our peers. So how can we in the new year, make it a practice to directly tie our work to that good we know we’re doing?

How do we make it genuinely tangible?

That well-researched blog post.

That social media strategy that took two months to finalize.

The annual report.

How do we tie all of this work to our own values? 

Here’s a literal back-of-the-envelope example of one way that I remind myself of how my work ties into what I value, into what my organization values. Because when I do this either visually (see below!) or mentally, it energizes me, it keeps me creative and motivates me to find new ways to connect my work to my goals.

Here’s my “holiday card edition” example I made for myself, and now for you.

Forgive the stick figures.

How do you connect your communications work to your organization’s mission and your values? Leave me a note in the comments. Curious to hear what you all recommend!

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A few days ago, I was strolling along the foggy coast in Northern California when I noticed a cormorant flying in “v” formation with a flock of pelicans. A week later, I saw a pelican flying with a flock of cormorants.

I’ve been watching these birds for years and never saw them co-mingle in a flight pattern. I always assumed the same types of birds fly together. It turns out these two species bond in the hunt for food because they can catch more if they work together.

It’s a great metaphor for a corporate-nonprofit partnership. Joining forces with organizations that have resources your organization doesn’t can yield exponential dividends.

As federal funding tightens and corporations take on a larger role in communities, these partnerships are becoming increasingly common — and successful.

“Whether it’s tackling the Muslim ban or protecting green spaces, nonprofits have products and services that many companies realize they need to create a healthy business environment, and to contribute to a world their stakeholders — employees, investors and customers — want to live in,” said Danielle Silber, director of strategic partnerships at American Civil Liberties Union.

Everyone Benefits

Are you with a nonprofit that wants to innovate but doesn’t have the financial cushion to take risks? Maybe you work for a company that wants to deliver services on a small scale to low-income neighborhoods, but don’t have the local understanding to do so.

Each entity has its strengths. A corporation has resources and connections, and a nonprofit has an intimate understanding of a community or issue area. Combined, the company can build a positive reputation showing its support for a cause, and the nonprofit can focus on advancing its mission.

For example, to help solve the problem of children missing school because they don’t have clean clothes to wear, Whirlpool created Whirlpool Care Counts — an initiative to install washers and dryers in schools to see how attendance rates are impacted when students have clean clothes. The pilot program was so successful, with 93 percent of participating students’ attendance increasing in the first year, that Whirlpool is partnering with Teach for America to reach more students across the country.

The Five Practices of Partnership

If you decide to embark on this kind of partnership, make sure you have senior management buy-in and ample resources to run it. Then, follow these five practices to increase your likelihood of success.

1. A shared vision: What is it that each of you are trying to accomplish? Companies often look to strengthen their brands with customers, shareholders and employees. A clearly articulated social mission helps them do that through their corporate social responsibility efforts. Nonprofits are laser-focused on their social missions such as alleviating poverty, curbing climate change, or providing healthcare, for example. Although companies and nonprofits have different reasons for partnering, both should agree on the partnership’s purpose and outcomes.

The issue the nonprofit is on a mission to solve will determine the perfect intersection for a company and nonprofit to work together. If a healthcare company wants to provide discounted services to low-income neighborhoods, the obvious partner for them is an organization whose mission is to do the same.

Look at Unilever’s partnership with Domestos and UNICEF to deliver clean, safe toilets to millions who don’t have them. In just three years, 6.2 million people received access, helping all three organizations meet their water, sanitation, hygiene and sales goals.

2. Define the partnership: Articulate the division of labor from the outset. Make sure each organization knows who is responsible for what, how decisions will be made, and which organization will lead the project. Appointing individuals will insure each side fulfills their commitments and keeps the train moving.

“Partnership terms are negotiated like any other contract,” said Cheryl Damian, senior vice president of Ketchum Social Purpose. “Not only does it drive accountability, it provides a clear understanding of roles and expectations. Many times it is during this process that organizations unearth hidden gems in terms of assets and expertise that can make the partnership more efficient and productive.”

3. Monitor and evaluate: Measuring progress is often the Achilles heel of any organization. Layer that with figuring out how to align metrics between disparate entities and the climb can seem steep.

Companies and nonprofits have different approaches to metrics. But measurement is critical to the success of the project in order to quickly build on what works, learn from what doesn’t, and keep momentum. A lexicon both partners can agree to, and realistically fulfill, will prevent mission stagnation.

In 2012, Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment (WB) created the We Can Be Heroes campaign to raise funds and awareness for the worst hunger crisis in the Horn of Africa since the ‘90s. Thirteen million people were displaced, and WB wanted to help. So they partnered with International Rescue Committee, MercyCorps, and Save the Children — three organizations equipped to deliver expedient aid to those devastated by the drought. All entities agreed that the best metrics for measuring the campaign’s success were how many people received aid and amount of funds raised. WB hit the two-year campaign goals within six months.

4. Communicate. Like a good marriage, your partnership requires nurturing to be fruitful. Don’t be shy about shaking out the rug if decision-making stalls or the partnership takes a wrong turn. Open dialogue will strengthen your collaboration and lead to better outcomes. So will establishing processes for communicating with your partner, and your internal team. Create a project work plan, schedule weekly check-in calls, and consider using technology like Slack or a project management tool like Teamwork to make collaboration easier.

And don’t forget to communicate partnership successes both internally and externally. Doing so will build excitement for the project throughout both organizations.

5. Flexibility: Remember, each organization has its own culture. Organizations evolve and grow — so must the partnership if you want to have a positive experience. Handle conflict when it arises, and be accommodating.

Creating a partnership can be challenging, but the effort is worth it for organizations and the communities they serve. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming if you take things step by step. If you’re considering a partnership, or are in the midst of one you’d like to reinvigorate, apply these five elements and you’re likely to cultivate strong results.

Jessica Scadron is the founder of Social Harmony, a communications firm that provides strategy and implementation to organizations changing the world. Find her on LinkedIn, Twitter and email.

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Photo courtesy of JD Lasica/Nonprofit Technology Conference 2013

If you’re like me, you feel a little bit of dread right before you leave for a conference. All the work I’ve left behind, the accumulating emails and deadlines waiting for me when I get back, and leaving my family behind is never easy. Then there’s the dreaded conference fatigue. Also, trying to find conference session rooms in these maze-like hotels makes me feel like a lost child right before I enter a room where I’d like to feel empowered and oriented. Anyone else?

Between room disorientation, sessions, networking, processing of new information, socializing, and then getting back to your hotel late to catch up on work or emails – it’s a lot. So, it’s easy to lose sight of all the great things that are happening while you’re at a conference and the subconscious magic that can integrate into your thinking and work afterwards.

So what’s so magical about conferences? Below I’ve attempted to consolidate some of what happens at these events between the excitement, fatigue, session confusion, wonderful AHA! moments, and reunions with former colleagues and friends:

• PROMOTES A LEARNING MINDSET – There’s something powerful about taking time out of a busy schedule to learn. Ask yourself what three things you want to get out of a conference before you go, and you’ll be setting yourself up for success.

• CONNECTION – Conferences allow you to liaise, and form greater relationships with your peers. Ask yourself BEFORE you get there – who do I want to meet? Can I set up a time to connect with them before I even get there?

• ELEVATED THINKING – Sessions often create conversations and introduce ideas that elevate your work and thinking around issues that pertain to your work, i.e. – women in tech, mentoring, and diversity. Ask yourself what themes interest you the most this year. What do you want to explore further? Choose sessions that make sense for what you’re there to do, but also make room for a at least a couple of sessions that are outside your comfort zone. You may be happily surprised.

• SPACE – Conferences give you space and time away to integrate your current thinking with the introduction of new concepts. Jot down notes at sessions – less about of the actual content which you can likely retrieve from the instructor, but of the larger questions you may have about the session topic or how you can apply your learning once you leave the room.

• INSPIRATION – Conferences are places to learn so much from others. This is also the time to dig below the surface. The time to ask bigger questions about important topics, your career, where the industry is going, and your place within it? Make sure you allow yourself the space to explore some of these ‘bigger’ questions. It will make the conference feel a lot more meaningful than just a bunch of sessions you attended over the course of three or four days. My favorite part of conferencing is the inspiration I take away from the work my peers are doing. It makes me want to go home and do better, and be better at what I do.

Did I miss anything else? Let me know in the comments!

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Relief Web, a humanitarian information source on global crises and disasters, and a digital service of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), recently released four mobile apps that aim to serve different members of the humanitarian aid community.

Each of these app aims to solve a problem or address a challenge that will meet specific needs of humanitarians.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the apps:

ReliefWeb Crises App

– Information gathering and making sense of a fast-paced humanitarian crisis can be challenging. This app provides key figures, access to latest reports and maps, real time financial status, as well as a comprehensive overview for each crisis. All of this is kept updated in real time.

– The app allows you to quickly compare different crises and gather the history of each event, so you can follow the evolution of a situation. Some recent examples: Haiti’s Hurricane Matthew and the crisis in Syria.

Headlines App

-Humanitarian situations evolve rapidly. Headlines App provides a general overview of the latest humanitarian developments globally.

– It is a tool that allows you to follow a person or location, i.e., “Ki-moon”, “Aleppo”,
“Gender”, “Refugees”,etc., and see what has been published on ReliefWeb that matches your search.

Videos App

– Videos allow you to get a much better sense of how things look in the field better than most reports usually can. It is a resource for complex , quickly changing situations, such as the ones in Syria and South Sudan, as well as for sudden onset disasters.

– Video is becoming a preferred reporting format for humanitarians, but prior to this launch there has been a gap in specialized video platforms that can gather these videos quickly and make them easy to access. ReliefWeb editors select relevant videos from more than 300 humanitarian sources, organize them, and make them available.

Jobs App

– Job finding can be challenging in the humanitarian system due to short-term appointments, short application deadlines, and fast paced recruitment. However, finding the right people quickly is key to the success of any humanitarian operation. The Jobs App provides access to most available jobs in the humanitarian sector.

– You can create a job search that matches your interests and skills and see when there are new jobs matching your search, i.e. communications officer, jobs in Sudan,
internship, etc.

All the apps allow you to bookmark reports to read later, and importantly, to share their content via social media.

Mobile visitors to ReliefWeb have increased significantly in the last few years, according to Adrian Ciancio, product manager at the digital humanitarian information service. “In 2015, mobile visitors to our site increased by an overwhelming 71%, of which over 90% were new visitors. Although we have a mobile version of the website, we believe that the apps allow us to package, curate, and organize content in ways that better serve the needs of our audience,” Ciancio said.

The team will also be conducting an impact evaluation on all the apps and plans on gathering user feedback in the upcoming months to improve and expand on the apps.

You can download the apps here: http://labs.reliefweb.int/apps

This piece was originally published on The Huffington Post

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Post by Caroline Avakian

Fall conference season is getting underway, so I wanted to share a few helpful tips to help manage and maximize your time spent at a conference(s). You’ll be glad you set these in motion when you get back from your next event.

Start with the end in mind

1What are the top three things you want to get out of this conference? Is it meeting a particular attendee or speaker? Is it networking or gaining a better understanding of how to create a social media strategy for your nonprofit? The more specific you are, the more likely you are to walk out of that conference feeling satisfied and accomplished.

Use your business cards to their fullest potential

2In the flurry of meet and greets, it is likely you’ll get home and won’t remember half of who those cards are from. To remedy this, think of one actionable item for each person you meet. Then write it on their business card before you walk out of the room.

Lessons learned

3Take a minute and write down the three things you learned after each conference session attended. It will all seem like less of a blur once you get back home and you’ll be able to take action on the items that really stood out. A plus, is that you can also share these lessons with colleagues who are interested.

BONUS TIP! 

If you’re on Twitter, following the conference hashtag and live tweeting are great ways to stay up-to-date and participate in conference learnings and conversations. This is also a great way to make new connections and even network with other tweeting attendees.

Happy September!

What are some of your favorite conference-going tips?

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By Darian Rodriguez Heyman

More and more nonprofit donations take place in today’s digital landscape, but how can causes ensure their online storefront is not only open for business, but optimized?

As I explored this critical issue in my new book, Nonprofit Fundraising 101, I interviewed Roderick Campbell, the CEO of nonprofit fundraising platform CommitChange. He shared a few takeaways from their efforts to maximize digital donations for Mercy House, a $3.8M nonprofit that has provided housing and support to California’s homeless since 1989.

This simple formula helped Mercy House double online giving in just six months, and I believe it can do the same for your nonprofit, too:

1. Break it Down: CommitChange helped Mercy House break the donation process down into four steps: recurring versus one-time; amount; info; and payment. Instead of asking for the information all at once, they simplified the process, which is especially helpful for digital donors contributing on their mobile device. Another great example of what this looks like is charity: water, also profiled in the book.

Whatever your process, be sure to look closely at recurring giving, as this creates valuable ongoing funding for your cause, increases gifts since people are more likely to donate $10 a month versus $120 now, and simple tweaking here can yield tremendous results: by leading with the recurring gift option, Mercy House increased the number of donors signing up as sustaining members by 400%!

2. Stay Consistent: The data proves what we all know in our guts: nobody likes to feel like they’re leaving your website once they hit that donate button. So be sure to keep the look and feel of your donate page consistent with your website and other communication materials and ensure your logo remains visible throughout the giving experience. This simple change helped Mercy House convert more of the people who clicked “donate” to actual supporters, while simultaneously increasing average gift size.

3. Streamline Donations: Less is more, and once someone clicks “donate,” your job is to make the giving process as simple as possible. In fact, CommitChange discovered that every field eliminated from the donation experience increases conversion by 2%. They further optimized conversion rates by adding some simple programming, so when Mercy House website visitors click the donate button, a new tab opens up exclusively dedicated to the donation process, ensuring a closed environment free of distractions.

By making these three simple changes, Mercy House was able to improve online giving by 110% in just six months, and it didn’t stop there. They continued to enjoy the fruits of their labor and saw an additional 73% increase in the six months after that. The point is, if you take the time to build a solid foundation for the house that is your online giving experience, the sky is the limit to what becomes possible.

Bio

Darian Rodriguez Heyman is an accomplished fundraiser, social entrepreneur, and best-selling author. His work “helping people help” started during his five-year tenure as Executive Director of Craigslist Foundation, after which he edited the best-selling book, Nonprofit Management 101: A Complete and Practical Guide for Leaders and Professionals (Wiley & Sons) and co-founded the global conference series, Social Media for Nonprofits and Sparrow: Mobile for All. His new book, Nonprofit Fundraising 101, is the first truly comprehensive yet practical guide to all aspects of fundraising for your cause, and chapters 15 – 18 are dedicated to online giving. Heyman is also an in-demand fundraising consultant and a frequent keynote speaker at social impact events around the globe.

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By Caroline Avakian

Content marketing has risen to the forefront in recent years as an important tool (if not the most important) in the nonprofit communication toolbox. It’s about creating great content on your blog, through social media messaging, email, quarterly and annual reports, case studies, whitepapers, etc.

At its core, content marketing is about communicating wisely with your supporters. The nonprofit, social enterprise or organization is providing value by creating and sharing information, innovative ideas, and insights that makes your supporter smarter and in the know. You become a resource. The result, much of the time, is that you earn the trust and loyalty of your supporters and donors. You no longer interrupt them with “messaging” but invite them into a conversation they find value in, that resonates, that they deem worthy of sharing with others, that makes them come back and ultimately invest in you.

The issue with creating great content is that often change-makers and nonprofit leaders are unsure about how to activate the most powerful resource they have: their intellectual capital. Nonprofits can be treasure troves of insights, experience and expertise, just waiting to be unleashed and shared with the world, but often the best of ideas and expertise lies dormant within the walls of an organization.

The Readiness Dance: Share your insights despite the misgivings

There are many reasons why organizations keep their most valuable thoughts and findings internal. I call it the Readiness Dance. People will say, “Our data isn’t completely ready yet – we’re not 100 percent clear internally on our direction with this project,” or something similar. While I completely advocate for presenting breakthrough insights that are research-based and clearly thought out — in fact, that is the essence of true thought leadership — very often it’s more about that “readiness” variable. It’s less about how analyzed the data is and more about how comfortable and confident we are in sharing our ideas and insights with the world.

When nonprofits hone in on their years of experience, research, collaborations and discoveries, they can advance their mission by using those same valuable thoughts and insights to lead. Many people call this thought leadership, and I’d like to see more organizations build their capacity to lead with their thinking.

Especially for smaller to medium-sized nonprofits, thought leadership can be one of the most effective and least expensive ways an organization can build awareness of their cause and support for their ideas and programs, and influence the communities they need to reach, including decision makers, policy makers and donors. By harnessing the power of their collective insights, an organization can shape its thought leadership to inspire and move its supporters to action.

While building a thought leadership program for a nonprofit should be thought of as an organization development exercise and not just a communications/PR job, communications teams often and appropriately lead it.

Below is a short primer to help you get the conversation started with your team. I recommend getting your group together around breakfast (or Google Hangout!) one morning and running them through this little primer. I promise it will get the conversation started and make for an interesting talk about how you approach your work and the insights and ideas that lie just below the surface.

Start with the big idea or revealing insights

Every big idea starts with a vision. It has a strong viewpoint and brings new insights and problem solving to an issue. Ask yourself what original, innovative and valuable perspective you and your organization bring to the table. What do you want to achieve from it?

Overcome culture shock

Effective thought leadership programs are an organizational development function, not just a public relations function. Powerful thought leadership campaigns need to be embedded into the culture of an organization to be truly successful. Teams need to be on board with sharing those ideas and insights with the world. They are your greatest ambassadors. Does your culture support that? If you encounter resistance, ask them what about it makes them uncomfortable?

Tell a great story

Concentrate on telling one focused and clear story and communicate it using channels you know your audience engages with. Social media, online communities, associations, traditional media and speaking events like panels and conferences are all fair game.

Become a resource

People don’t like to be sold things, for the most part — even when what you’re selling is a noble and brilliant cause. That said, they do buy into solutions, expertise and problem solving. Share your insights. Spread your idea. Offer guidance and people will follow.

Inspire action

Powerful thought leadership can inspire people to act. Whatever your idea is, make sure that it is actionable. What do you want people to do? Be brave. Ask for what you want.

What are some of the ways your team is leading the conversation on the issues that drive your cause? I’d love to hear some examples. If you’re not quite there yet, I would love to hear what some of the barriers are that you’ve encountered.

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Predictions are a tricky thing. They’re mostly comprised of strong currents of the present, past habits and a big dose of educated guessing. When it comes to nonprofits, there’s also an element of hopefulness that’s thrown in, at least in my list of predictions for 2016.

2015 has seen much innovation in technology and communication. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals were recently approved and organizations and countries have started working towards the newly revamped goals. We’ve also seen the world change dramatically – terrorism in all its new iterations is ever present, and we’ll be seeing how nonprofits and global development and relief organizations respond to the current challenges on and off the ground. Here are my predictions for 2016 that reflect our changing global dynamics and expectations.

Social Media – Both large and small social good organizations will be capitalizing on hashtags in much more proactive and creative ways. We’ll be seeing more organizations use mainstream hashtags that aren’t necessarily exclusive to the nonprofit sector, such as #finance #innovation and #smallbiz to inject themselves into digital conversations that are related to their causes. We’re also going to be seeing the hashtags #globalgoals and #SDGS become increasingly popular unifying hashtags as social good organizations and countries come together to work on the newly approved United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. We’re also starting to see nonprofits dip their toes into social livestreaming apps like Periscope and Meerkat, and the capacity it has to take us to places and share experiences largely unseen by supporters and donors.

Global Development – As the world continues to counter terrorism, war and violent conflict, and natural disasters, we’ll be seeing governments and mainstream media work much more closely with both large and small NGOs, in an effort to tap into local knowledge and expertise. We’ll see nonprofits respond cautiously but proactively in their new role, and invest more resources into communications and messaging.

Intrapreneurship – As social entrepreneurship continues to rise in the social good sector, more and more nonprofits are looking at the model that incorporates not only profit-making capacities, but also relies strongly on innovation and an ability to pivot quickly when needed, as potential new ways forward. Intrapreneurship, often led by solution and innovation-focused staff members, will continue to pick up speed as nonprofits start looking at new ways of creating revenue, exploring new partnerships and collaborations, and expanding their ability to sustain themselves beyond their present fundraising strategies.

Transparency & Accountability – Nonprofits will continue to make greater investments and improvements in monitoring and evaluation methodologies and staffing, improve on their impact storytelling, specifically using data visualization and graphics. We’ll see more nonprofit websites, social channels and blog posts that speak to us ways in ways we better understand, with more institutional knowledge and opinion shared, as more “fortress” nonprofits embrace communication and openness.

Content Marketing – As blogging continues to be the most rewarding content marketing tool for nonprofits, we’ll see more nonprofits train and encourage program and other staff members to share their field stories and expertise. Traditionally in the hands of communications staff members, we’ll also see more CEOs and Executive Directors creating more content on various platforms, in an effort to increase their organization’s visibility, positioning, and thought leadership.

The challenge for nonprofits in the new year, as it is every year, is finding the internal staffing and financial resources (and often the organizational will because of limited capacity) to move forward on new initiatives that help move the ‘mission needle’ forward. It will be exciting to see how nonprofits take on their various challenges and show us that the social good sector is innovating and moving forward in the most meaningful ways.

This post was originally published on The Huffington Post.

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As a follow-up to my Periscope for Nonprofits Quick Guide, I wanted to focus on real Nonprofit Periscopers, and how they’re using this new tool for social good.

Today, I’m featuring Jennifer Tislerics, the Special Events & Partnerships Coordinator for Gift of Life Michigan. Gift of Life Michigan coordinates organ and tissue donations from deceased donors for the state. Jennifer also handles social media, youth outreach, faith-based programs, workplace outreach, and more.

As a refresher, Periscope is a three month-old, free mobile app that allows any user to live stream from wherever they are. Jennifer bravely responded to our call out for ‘Nonprofit Periscopers’ and she had a lot of great advice to offer in our Q & A.

1) What made you want to try out Periscope? Was it a strategic move as part of a larger social strategy, or did you want to experiment with the app first to see if it would work for your nonprofit?

I saw the Michigan Secretary of State staff using Periscope at a press conference during National Donate Life Month in April. (In Michigan our Secretary of State oversees the DMV, and helps coordinate the state’s organ donor registry.) It seemed like an easy way to engage a broader audience in an event. I watched a few other broadcasts on the iPad and was intrigued by the possibilities to engage distant supporters in real-time. I decided to experiment with it a bit, to see how it might benefit our organization and cause.

2) What event did you use Periscope for?

In late April I used Periscope at a kick-off breakfast event for an annual walk/run event. I plan to use it again at the actual walk/run in late July.

3) What was the experience like? Did you get good feedback from users? Take us through your steps.

It was a rough start, actually. One of the biggest lessons I learned is to use a tripod and get up close to the action – do not carry the iPad around or video from the back of the room. At least not at a seated event – I will probably move around some at the walk/run event. I accidentally stopped the video early (bad finger placement holding the iPad), so had to start fresh with a new video, which our Twitter followers may not have found. Actually, I did a few shorter-than-intended videos. The ones with the most audience traffic had short but interesting titles, which made our video stand out from the crowd.

4) What was engagement like?

Not nearly as many people watched the videos as I had hoped, but it was early on a work-day morning. It was fun to see people in the real-life audience following on Periscope, too, and sending us hearts and positive comments!

5) What did you learn? Any tips to share?

Practice first! Practice on-site. Make sure you’ve got a solid internet connection. Use a tripod. Prepare a few people to talk to you on video beforehand. Promote it in advance so people know to follow you on Twitter to get the link (and any new links you may create after accidentally cutting the video short).

6) What worked and what didn’t? What would you like to see improved?

I wish we could “add on” or continue a previous video, rather than having to create a new one if we accidentally stop the first video. It’s tough typing in a new title in a hurry, trying to rush and get online again. In general, I think Periscope viewers prefer interactive videos rather than “broadcasts” of speeches, although when we video’d a Michigan Supreme Court Justice speaking that got some audience attention!

7) Would you use Periscope again?

Definitely! I plan to at our walk/run on July 25 in Detroit.

8) Did you download the broadcast?

No, I didn’t feel I got a high enough quality video to make that worthwhile. This time.

9) Do you see yourself adding it to your social media strategy?

Yes, if these first few experiences prove successful, or at least promising, we will incorporate it into our strategy.

10) Anything else you want to tell me that I didn’t ask?

Follow @giftoflifemich on Twitter the morning of Saturday, July 25 to get links to our Periscope video(s) and send me feedback! I’m always open to suggestions for improvement.

We will definitely do that, Jennifer, and we’ll send you tons of Periscope hearts for all the great work you are doing at Gift of Life Michigan! Thank you for sharing your Periscope experience with us.

Photo courtesy of Gift of Life Michigan

PS – I will be featuring nonprofits and NGOs using Periscope on this blog, so please let me know in the comments below of any npos you know that are using Periscope to engage their supporters.

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