How nonprofits can use SMART goals to chart impact

Guest post by Beth Kanter
Beth’s Blog

Using SMART objectives for nonprofit communications strategies is not a new idea. Spitfire’s useful SMART chart planning tool has been used by many nonprofits over the years.

SMART Objectives are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely objectives. The Aspen Institute’s Continuous Progress blog points out they come in three flavors:

Tactical: Tools and techniques
Results: Money, time, or other tangible result that can be converted
Capacity: People, content, workflow, learning

The process includes beginning with identifying intent. Next, make it specific by adding a number, percentage, increase/decrease and a date. Some nonprofits find it hard to do because it takes hitting the pause button. Also, there may be a feeling that one is getting “graded” if they don’t make the deadline or hit the target number. But remember: SMART objectives can be revised along the way.

Some struggle to find an attainable number. Benchmarking, comparing your organization’s past performance to itself, or doing a formal or informal analysis of peer organizations, can help. It also helps to break down your goal into monthly or quarterly benchmarks.

It’s also important to think about what specific metrics are needed to measure along the way. Often, there is too much data collected and not enough sense-making of it. Many organizations think more data is better. It’s best to concentrate on the one or two data points that will help guide improvements and demonstrate results. With social media as with communications strategies, the data points are those that will help measure:  awareness, attitudes, actions, or behavioral change.

Finally, allocating time for a reflection about what worked or what didn’t work based on an analysis of the data is critical. Many nonprofits have not institutionalized this approach. Unfortunately, there is a goldmine of learning lost about lead to success or how to improve results next time around.

Outlining objectives

Here’s a summary of 25 SMART social media objectives (actually, more than 25) from the Leveraging Social Media project with arts organizations:

Results

• Increase website traffic by 25% by adding social media content starting posting by Nov. 1, 2013.
• Acquire 100 new donors through Facebook Causes by June 30, 2013
• Increase email list sign ups through social media channels by 500 names by June 30, 2013
• Increase the number of gallery visitors who purchase (in person or online) by 20% by June 30, 2013
• Increase online and print mentions by 25% by June 30, 2013
• Increase enrollment in classes and workshops by 50% by June 30, 2013
• Increase exhibition visitors by 15%  by June 30, 2013

Tactical

• Increase audience connections through Facebook to 1,000 by June 1, 2013
• Increase our month to month Post Feedback on Facebook by 25% on average
• Increase mentions by 20% on Twitter before, during, and after performances for 2013
• Increase likes and comments with fans on Facebook to three comments per post by June 30, 2013
• Increase views on YouTube by 50% by January 2013
• Increase the number of retweets and @replies on Twitter by 20% by Sept., 30, 2013
• Recruit 40 organizations to join our LinkedIn organization page by June 30, 2013
• Increase website traffic from Facebook by 20% by Sept. 30, 2013
• Use Facebook to increase Festival attendance and online program views by 5% by September 2013
• Identify top 25  influencers on Twitter to  build relationships to help blog, repost, and spread the word about online  program by Sept. 30, 2013
• Increase the age/ethnicity/gender/income/geographic of Facebook fans by 20%  by June 30, 2013

Capacity

• Create video trailers for all productions garnering an average of 100 views per trailer for the 2013-2014 programs
• Integrate social media across organization staff and ask departments to use it reach goals by 2013
• Conduct an audience survey to determine where to expand, grow, and diversify social media presence for 2013
• Create one video per month to tell stories about the impact of our organization by January 2014
• Recruit 40 organizations
• Staff members in membership, fundraising, communications, and marketing departments will use social media tools to engage audiences on Facebook page three times per week
• Conduct surveys at the end of every class and workshop to gather important audience social media usage data and experience with program by June 2013
• Enhance visual storytelling capacity and diversify type of content shared with a goal of increasing videos by 10%, photos by 20% and text that stimulates comments by 20% by Aug. 1, 2013
• Create a presence and support active fans on social fundraising sites Crowdrise and Change.org by Sept. 30, 2013
• Create a system to collect, aggregate, and share user-generated content on social media by audiences by Sept. 30, 2013

What if we stepped away from the process of checking off items on our to do list, and spent a little bit of time charting impact of our nonprofit’s social media use? What if we made sure the process for identifying SMART objectives included capacity building, measurement, and reflection?

What are your organization’s SMART social media objectives? How did you determine it? How will you measure them along the way?

The post 25 SMART social media objectives appeared first on Socialbrite.

6 tips to keep your content top-of-stream

Guest post by Meghan Keaney Anderson
Hubspot

In late September news trickled out about a change in Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm that was causing big drops in reach for many branded pages for nonprofits, businesses and all organizations. The EdgeRank algorithm determines which posts are displayed in the newsfeed and in what priority order. Noticing a clear decrease in the reach and virality of pages, Beth Kanter took to Facebook to see if many nonprofits had experienced it. She received a number of replies affirming the dropoff, while others, like John Haydon at Socialbrite, say the evidence doesn’t support that claim.

What seems to have changed?

Both EdgeRank Checker and Post Rocket have good posts on the details, but in a nutshell, Facebook has altered the way it displays posts in the newsfeed to prioritize posts that have the greatest number of interactions – a cumulative figure determined by the number of clicks, likes, comments and shares a post receives. The new algorithm also factors in negative feedback and penalizes posts that have been actively hidden by viewers or reported as spam.

Regardless of whether Facebook’s code tweaking is having an impact on your fans’ newsfeeds, the real question now is: Short of paying for promoted posts, what can nonprofits do to adjust to these changes and make sure their content earns the sort of reach and virality needed to engage new volunteers, donors and advocates? Here are a few tips to keep in mind to help your content remain top-of-stream.

Audit your content

1The major point that emerges from Facebook’s explanation of the new algorithm is that posts with the most positive engagement in the form of clicks, likes, comments and shares will appear more often in the newsfeed, resulting in higher reach and virality. This could be a good thing for Facebook users. As more and more brands have ramped up their presence on Facebook, the newsfeed has become increasingly cluttered with content. The algorithm change was designed, at least in part, to reduce the noise in an individual’s newsfeed and give more prominence to really good content.

How to leverage it: Take 30 minutes to audit your content that has done well in the past on Facebook. Put your top content through each of the following questions and see where trends emerge.

• What common traits do the posts have in terms of subject matter or format?
• What tone did each of your top shares have? Were they urgent? Funny? Or did they raise questions for response?
• What was the call to action, if any? In her recent book “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” Beth Kanter talks about a ladder of engagement, with smaller actions laying the foundation for larger ones. Where in the ladder of engagement would you place the calls to action of your top posts?

Once you have laid out your top posts and examined their tone, content and format, use any themes that emerged to map out your future posts.

Post at the optimal time to drive activity

2Because so much of the new algorithm depends on early activity, timing is just as important as content. In 2011, HubSpot’s Dan Zarrella conducted extensive research on the topic of social media timing. He studied more than 1.3 million posts from the 10,000 most-Liked Facebook pages to glean some larger trends in the timing of social shares. What he found for Facebook was that shares on average had the highest rate of activity during the weekend. It’s easy to forget about posting on weekends, but weekends are prime-time for engagement with newsfeed posts. Many offices still block Facebook during the workweek. Even for those who allow it, the weekend allows more time for individuals to browse and interact with posts.

How to leverage it: Use a social media scheduler to line up posts for the weekend. See How to schedule a Facebook page update, and see what kind of activity you get. Don’t rely on HubSpot’s research alone, however. Conduct your own experiments to see what days and times tend to see the highest activity within your office. Pull your top posts and see if any trends emerge in the timing of those with the most interaction. Similarly, pull posts that saw no engagement and try to identify black holes in your sharing schedule to avoid in the future. Here’s a look at HubSpot’s analysis, which I pulled together for this post.

As you can see, our posts seem to generate the most activity on Sunday, followed shortly after by Monday and Tuesday. We garner lower engagement toward the end of the week. I also took a look at the time of day when activity is highest for us. Sorted below in the HubSpot social media tool, you can see that we have had good success sharing content with our audience in the mornings.

Understand the behavior that leads to hide, hide-all, and unlike

3In addition to auditing what’s working with your shares, take a look at what would motivate a user to hide, hide-all or unlike your content. Hiding content is tantamount to deleting an email without reading it. Hiding-all is the equivalent of unsubscribing, and unliking closes the relationship entirely. In Facebook’s new algorithm, content that has negative feedback from some users can cause it to be minimized or pulled from all news feeds. Take a look at what could be causing people to hide or unlike your content. Are you posting too frequently? Try altering your schedule to add more space between your posts. Are you asking for too much? Compare posts with different calls to action to see what types cause hides or low engagement.

Post more images and videos

4Our research and our day-to-day experience shows that images and videos tend to have much higher engagement than text-only posts or links. Make sure you’ve got a healthy mix of images Below, an image from United Way of Massachusetts Bay & Merrimack Valley (an organization I support) shows the value of volunteering. The image resulted in 30 likes and 3 comments, among the highest levels of engagement on their page. Want to make an image even stronger? Couple it with a relevant link to your volunteer page or another call to action.

Balance your content

5Trying out different types of content will help you see what posts work best. In addition, keeping a healthy balance of different types of posts can help you engage different people. Oxfam does a nice job with this on their Facebook page. Think about mixing your content up to meet the interests of a growing audience and to keep your Facebook page fresh. Incorporate:

• Blog posts
• Images with calls to action
• Videos
• Cause-driven items for purchase
• Quotes from supporters
• Profiles of the people you serve
• Questions for your fans and followers
• Responses to your fans and followers

Advise super-fans to add your organization to an interest list

6One sure-fire way for your top supporter to see all of your organization’s shares is to encourage them to add you to an interest list. Interest lists on Facebook organize all of your favorite topics and keep you from missing posts. Even better, if the interest list is left public, others can subscribe it – expanding your reach.

You can create your own interest list with partner organizations or nonprofits in your geographic area, then encourage others to subscribe to it. Lists turn Facebook into a media consumption channel in addition to a social network.

Keep calm and inspire on

This was not the first adjustment Facebook has made and it likely won’t be the last. The best response to this and any change from a third party platform is to dissect what drives the change and determine how your social media strategy can best adapt to accommodate it. Early on, the algorithm change raised concerns that purchasing promoted posts would be the only reliable way to maintain a presence in the Facebook newsfeed. But a closer look at the character of the change reveals a number of methods that nonprofits can use remain on top without having to dip into vital funds. Even with algorithm changes, the main tenet of social shares remains true: Interesting, remarkable content will always rise to the top.

Related

• 13 ways to boost your Facebook Page reach without spending a dime (Socialbrite)

The post How nonprofits can adapt to Facebook’s newsfeed changes appeared first on Socialbrite.

Engagement leads to trust, which leads to results

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations and NGOs on Facebook.

Facebook is about friendships. It’s about reconnecting with old friends and keeping up with close friends.

Facebook is not about buying things or getting the lowest price. There are already websites for that, like Amazon and eBay.

Facebook is relational, it’s not transactional.

In their new book “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit,” authors Beth Kanter and Katie Payne talk about the “ladder of engagement” as a way to visualize how nonprofits move people in stages from awareness to action.

The diagram at top might be called the “Facebook Ladder of Donor Engagement.” Keep in mind that his diagram is just one way to represent how donors relate to your nonprofit or organization on Facebook.

Interactions increase as trust goes up

You’ll notice two data points:

1Trust and affinity: As people become aware of your organization and interact with you at different levels of commitment, trust and affinity increase (or decrease if you’re not trustworthy or likable).

2Audience size: Similar to the sales funnel model popular in the for-profit world, audience sizes very become smaller at each stage of the game.

In this diagram, each step represents an action someone can take on Facebook to express their relationship with a cause, but it may look very different for your nonprofit.

Tell us: What does this ladder look like for your organization?

The post The Facebook ladder of engagement appeared first on Socialbrite.

Book giveaway: Win the book to grasp the power of metrics!

If you’re like most nonprofit professionals, you’ll eventually admit that you could do a better job of measuring.

The good news is that you’re not alone. Most nonprofits (and in fact most for-profits) are struggling with the challenge of measuring relationships, which is essentially what social media is all about.

To help you keep your eyes on the prize, Beth Kanter and Katie Paine sell the benefits of measurement in their new book, Measuring the Networked Nonprofit.

Win a free copy of ‘Measuring the Networked Nonprofit’

Want a free copy? Leave a comment below about what measurement has done for your organization. Co-author Beth Kanter will be randomly select a commenter to receive a free copy of “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit.” Feel free to share this post on Twitter, too!

Chapter 4 outlines 12 reasons that measurement is powerful:

1. It helps you get to where you’re going. Because social media is essentially about relationships, continuous feedback is required to improve them.
2. It stimulates new ideas on what to do next. Analyzing data is not just data dumping. It’s discovery!
3. It gives you credibility. You’ll need this to get support for your awesome ideas.
4. It helps you discover what tools and tactics work best for your particular goals.
5. It saves you time. If you know that you’re not getting results from a particular approach, you’ll stop doing it.
6. It increases the likelihood of success through informed planning.
7. It helps you raise more money. If you know why potential donors abandoned transactions, you’ll fix it. If you know which messages turn one-time donors into repeat donors, you’ll use them.
8. It helps you work smarter. Unicorns and rainbows just don’t cut it anymore.
9. It fuels your passion. We all could use more of this, right?
10. It generates excitement. Ditto.
11. It helps you change the world.
12. The last thing I’ll say about Measuring the Networked Nonprofit is that it will help you begin to improve – starting from where you are right now.

Don’t forget to leave a comment below to win a copy of the book!

Update: Our comments service, LiveFyre, has been up and down all day because of a power outage at Amazon AWS. If you don’t see comments below, please check back.

Related

• Metrics tips & best practices (Socialbrite)

The post 12 ways measuring can empower your nonprofit appeared first on Socialbrite.

Here at Socialbrite, we’re always looking for sterling examples of how the corporate sector is contributing in genuine ways to the social good. Those bridges between the for-profit and nonprofit/social good sectors are becoming increasingly vital.

So I was jazzed to see the presentation by Beth Kanter and Kami Huyse of Zoetica yesterday at NewComm Forum in San Mateo, Calif., on what they’re calling “lethal generosity” (a term from Shel Israel’s “Twitterville”). The discussion provided some clarity around the difference between corporate social responsibility, cause marketing and what the Zoetica folks call lethal generosity: “when a corporation applies its core competencies to advance social change in a way that contributes to business results and gives it a competitive advantage.”

Without going into whether the term will catch on (I think it probably won’t — it’s really just CSR done right), here are four fantastic examples of how large companies have been contributing to the social good in compelling ways:

Molson Coors & responsible drinking

1.Over the years, Molson Coors Canada has used CSR to advance its brand — and is one of the few major corporations to take advantage of social media in doing so. (Shel Israel wrote about Molson in his book Twitterville.) As Beth mentioned yesterday, Molson Coors invests more in responsible drinking education than on alcohol-centered events. Molson reaches out to the community to find ways to spread the message of responsible drinking, putting money behind the TaxiGuy program (for those who’ve had one too many) and covering the cost of free public transit on New Year’s Eve.

Shel recounts the story of the holiday season of 2008 when the Toronto Transit Authority canceled its New Year’s Eve free-ride transportation because of budget cuts. Molson stepped in and launched a campaign to replace public funding with private sector donations, starting with its own $20,000 donation.

Molson has a small social media team led by Ferg Devins, who is not only responsible for selling beer but for outreach to communities in need. The team uses Twitter and blogging to initiate community generosity projects.

• Molson’s Responsible Drinking Program (see image at top)
• Molson Coors blog — they even have a Socialbrite-style Twitter conversation widget at the right
• @molsonferg on Twitter (Ferg Devins)
• Molson Canadian Facebook page

Tyson Foods & hunger relief

2.Tyson Foods offers another example of a major company tying its corporate social responsibility efforts to its core mission. Tyson has committed its brand to efforts to relieve and ultimately end childhood hunger, and in the past few years been integrating social media into its hunger relief efforts.

Tyson connected with the Social Media Club and began a string of extraordinarily smart and effective efforts to enlist the community. For example, it launched a campaign in Austin in which it agreed to donate 100 pounds of chicken to the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas for every comment posted on its blog. They received 658 comments in two hours and loaded up two trucks filled with chicken for the hungry, Beth said. They repeated the success in Boston and San Francisco, launched a user-generated video contest in Minnesota and sponsored a day of service for its social media team.

• Tyson Hunger Relief Blog
• Tyson Hunger Relief: Our Commitment
• Tyson Hunger Relief blog post on outside Twitter accounts involved in hunger relief
• Tyson Hunger Relief on Twitter (Ed Nicholson)
• Tyson Foods Hunger Relief on Facebook
• Sustainability – It’s In Our Nature: Report on Tyson Foods’ economic, social and environmental efforts (PDF)

Haagen-Dazs & honeybee preservation

3.Honeybees are disappearing at an alarming rate — and that’s bad news for the global food chain. Haagen-Dazs decided to create a microsite to raise awareness about the issue: “Honey bees are responsible for pollinating one-third of all the foods we eat, including many of the ingredients that define our all-natural ice creams, sorbets, frozen yogurt and bars.” Again, smartly tying it back to the company’s core mission.

The company is donating a portion of proceeds from its Haagen-Dazs honeybee brand to research on the topic, and it launched a modest Twitcause campaign through the #HelpHoneyBees hashtag, raising $7,000 in two days last November (“Bee Buzz generated: 643,748 tweets”).

• Help the Honeybees microsite

Greenopolis & recycling

4.Greenopolis was developed to serve as an educational tool to teach people how to be more environmentally sound as they go about their daily lives. The goals for the Web site are summed up in its tagline: “Learn. Act. Reward. Together.” Greenopolis was created by, and is wholly owned by, Waste Management Recycle America, but operates independently. Last year, Beth said, they took part in a Social Media Breakfast in Houston.

Greenopolis has a presence on several social media sites, offers a daily look at some interesting metrics (Total tons of WMRA recycled: 5,367,009), offers on-street recycling kiosks and has a rewards program (Think Green Rewards earned: 4,074,988) that lets people cash in points for small items. “You get points for blogging, they use the community to create content and they license their logo to qualifying organizations like the Green Housekeeping seal of approval,” Beth said.

• Greenopolis on Twitter
• Greenopolis Facebook page
• Greenopolis YouTube channel

Related

• Beth Kanter: What is Lethal Generosity?
• Kami Huyse: Definition of Lethal Generosity
• Pamela Hawley & JD Lasica on BlogTalkRadio: The power of giving & corporations doing social good
• Transcript of podcast on corporate social responsibility

The post 4 examples of corporate social responsibility done right appeared first on Socialbrite.

You may have heard that Allison Fine and Beth Kanter have co-authored a book called The Networked Nonprofit. At the Nonprofit Technology Conference, they signed printed copies of the first chapter, “Introducing Networked Nonprofits.”

In short, networked nonprofits are defined not by websites and software but by the networked culture that they fully embrace.

The first chapter of the book underscores several qualities that Networked Nonprofits share:

1. Transparent – During a presentation in Atlanta, Beth and Allison used a sponge (the fry-cook ocean kind, not the kitchen) to illustrate transparency:
   • A sponge clings to rock no matter how many times it’s battered by waves. Your organization is firmly grounded in its cultural identity, organizational goals and mission.
   • A sponges filter out nutrients as waves pass through it. Your organization grows by making it easy for “outsiders to get in and insiders to get out.”
2. Value Networks – You value the connections your nonprofit has online and offline. And you nurture key relationships that spread the “good word” through the network.
3. Comfort With Tools – Your nonprofit is comfortable using blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other tools that facilitate two-way conversation.
4. Networked Ecosystem – You’re not trying to do it all. Your nonprofit knows that it’s “part of a much larger ecosystem or organizations and individuals that are all incredible resources for their efforts.”
5. Courageous – You’re not afraid to lose control of your message, your logo, or your message. You know that the wisdom and passion of your supporters can have an infinitely greater impact than you and your staff.
6. Trusting – You trust your supporters to make good decisions on behalf of your organization. Your organization focuses on giving them the tools they need instead of enforcing copyright laws.
7. Athletic – Social media is not a set of tools to be used only by your IT or marketing folks. Your organization understands the power that Facebook and Twitter have in the lives of your supporters because you use the tools yourself. It’s a contact sport.

Note: Beth Kanter is a partner in Socialbrite. You can pre-order The Networked Nonprofit on Amazon.

How networked is your organization? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Cross-posted from JohnHaydon.com.

The post 7 critical qualities of a networked nonprofit appeared first on Socialbrite.

How to harness the power of the crowd for a quick & easy campaign

Yesterday was a very exciting day: we threw a surprise party for Beth Kanter online. It was a bit of fun mixed with experiment, and I think it was really successful. Here are some reflections about how we used crowdsourcing techniques for a very fast-moving campaign and lessons learned that may apply to your work.

Lesson #1: Design an action and invitation that’s doable and interesting — while focused on your goal.

Stacey Monk and I exchanged messages last week, brainstorming the idea of pulling bloggers together to support Beth’s birthday campaign.  We wanted it to be something fun and interesting, so people would want to join – a surprise party!  And we wanted it to be easy to do – write a blog post!

First, we created an open Google Doc where we put in the introduction language, so anyone that clicked through from someone’s blog or Twitter post would have context about what was happening (and included a numbered list up to 53, so people could easily see where to add their name and blog address).

Next, I sent out an invitation that included a simple explanation and invitation to join with easy steps for those interested.  When sending out an invitation, it’s important to remember that the language you use needs to be appropriate for those you’re inviting, as well as to their audience as they could easily repurpose the language or calls to action you use to more quickly and easily share/spread the campaign.

Here’s a copy of the initial email as an example:

Subject: Help wish Beth Kanter a happy 53rd!

Hi friends –

As you probably know, Monday is Beth Kanter’s birthday.  Stacey Monk and I didn’t want the day to go by too quietly so are hoping you’ll join us in making a big splash to celebrate!

Her birthday wish is to raise money for the Sharing Foundation using Causes and we think we could help her crush her goal of sending 53 Cambodian children to school by raising $530.  We’re trying to throw her an online surprise party by assembling a blogsquad of 53 bloggers to publish a post on Monday that shares how Beth has impacted your work and shares her birthday wish with your blog audience.  Of course, I hope you’ll make a gift to make her wish come true too

We’re just hoping to make her birthday super happy by making her wish come true and reminding her just how much good she does.

If you’re interested, just:

1) Write your name and blog address on the signup form here: http://bit.ly/bethbdayblogs

2) Publish your post first thing Monday morning. Include a link back to her birthday wish post at http://bit.ly/beth53

3) Pass this invite on to anyone you think might want to join us.

And don’t forget to wish her a Happy Birthday Monday on Twitter too with the tweet she’s asked us to pass along: “Happy birthday #beth53! Let’s send 53 Cambodian kids to school: http://bit.ly/beth53”

Thank you so much for your help, support and participation!

Amy (& Stacey)

To recap: Our audience included bloggers in the nonprofit technology and social impact sector; our goals were to help reach Beth’s $530 fundraising goal and recruit 53 “happy birthday” blog posts reflecting on Beth’s work. The campaign was focused on the goal and created with the audience in mind (how they behave, what they are interested in, what they could do on short notice, and how they would want to participate).

Lesson #2: Encourage participants to share, invite others and promote their own participation.

Part of using blog posts in the campaign is the strategy that in order to participate, people are promoting!  We also created and provided shortened URLs for the two links we wanted everyone to use (the link to the Google Doc where people were registering their participation: http://bit.ly/bethbdayblogs and the link to Beth’s birthday wish blog post: http://bit.ly/beth53). Using these shortened URLs and sharing them in the invitation via email and posts on Twitter meant that others were likely to use them and easily share the campaign.

We also included the hashtag for Twitter that Beth promoted in her Birthday Wish blog post (#beth53 – review the Twitter stream for the hashtag), another way that people could find and share tweets about the surprise party easily.

To recap: We took advantage of popular techniques for sharing and networking conversations including URL shorteners and hashtags.

Lesson #3: Create compositions that allow for variations on a theme.

What was key to our approach was that we did not say where people had to post, or exactly what they had to say.  We even said that they could do something else entirely! This meant more people were empowered to participate because they could make it their own.

Some people posted on their own blogs.  Some posted to community blogs like NetSquared. Others posted on Facebook (using the Notes application).  Some tweeted. And others came up with even more unique ways to get involved. (See the Google Doc for links.)

To recap: we invited people to express themselves in the way they chose while still being part of reaching the goals.

Lesson #4: Create easy ways to track and follow the campaign.

Using the URL shorteners and hashtags made sharing tweets, blog posts and calls to action easy to post and share, but it also meant that everything was easy to follow. We could follow the hashtag on Twitter using Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com/) and could use the tracking built into Bit.ly to track clicks on the links (http://bit.ly/) (or try doing a search using Tweetmeme).

The Google Doc that served as an information and context piece for people sharing and finding the campaign also served as the sign-up sheet for participants, so people could add their own name and blog information to the campaign details without Stacey or I having to track them down. The email invitation also turned into a reporting mechanism as people would reply-all to share their link with others participating.

To recap: The methods for sharing and promoting the campaign were also designed to create easy ways of measuring participation and impact.

Lesson #5:  Say thanks!

What I found most rewarding in this campaign was that saying “thanks!” was part of it from the start: people’s blog posts and twitter messages were all saying thanks to Beth for ways her work had impacted their own. It had a deep gratitude through and through.

Because of the tools mentioned above (the hashtag and URLs and Google Doc), it was easy to reply on Twitter or elsewhere to thank people for their support and participation.  As people replied to the invitation email, I could also email them directly to thank them for participating and sharing in the celebration.  Stacey and I both sent thank you emails to the full list of participants towards the end of the day, too.

To recap: saying thanks is important – we all know that.  But finding ways to say it where people are participating (if they are tweeting your campaign, thank them publicly in Twitter, for example) will only further spread and promote the campaign.

It’s been a very fun experiment and a great way to spend the day!

A huge thanks to my friend and colleague Stacey Monk, the woman behind Epic Change, without whom this surprise party wouldn’t have happened!  And one last thanks to Beth, for giving us a reason to come together in celebration!

Note:  Beth was able to smash her goal of raising $530 by getting $4,540 donated to help buy school uniforms and send Cambodian children to school via the Sharing Foundation.  We also smashed our goal of recruiting 53 bloggers, with 66 signed up and many more participating in other ways. Thanks!

Cross-posted from Amy Sample Ward’s blog.

The post 5 lessons from a crowdsourced birthday party appeared first on Socialbrite.

Our colleague Beth Kanter, author of Beth’s Blog, turns 53 years young today. The past year has been a momentous one for Beth, who pulled up roots and moved with her family from Boston to the Bay Area, rented a house, co-authored a book, became a visiting scholar at the Packard Foundation — I don’t know, probably won a Nobel Prize when I wasn’t looking.

Beth is Exhibit A for those who believe that individuals can make a real difference. As perhaps the best-known name in nonprofit technology, Beth has been pioneering the use of social media for social good long before many people even knew what social media was.

Today, Stacey Monk, Amy Sample Ward, Christine Egger and several others have organized an online surprise birthday party for Beth — a fun and spot-on idea. Writes Amy:

In her birthday wish post, Beth announces that she’s trying to send 53 Cambodian children to school by raising $530.  Last week, Stacy Monk and I were chatting and thought that our community could help smash that goal by raising much more funds as well as awareness for the work the Sharing Foundation does in Cambodia.

I’ve already contributed to the cause (as I have the past two years). Not only has the effort blown past $530, at this hour it’s up to $2,019, which means 201 Cambodian children will benefit. (Beth’s two children, Harry and Sara, were adopted from Cambodia and are now happily ensconced in Silicon Valley.)

Please contribute at Beth’s Birthday Wish Page on Causes. (If you’d like to join the birthday brigade, sign up on this Google doc.)

Or, just stay informed by reading her blog and her dispatches here. Beth was one of the main inspirations for Socialbrite.org — I always pick up a trick or two by following her writings or seeing her in person — and she continues to amaze with her frenetic pace and deeply felt zeal.

The world’s a much better place as a result.

The post How individuals make a real difference appeared first on Socialbrite.