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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Code for America from Inkerman Road on Vimeo.

Code for America: 5 tips on upping your video game

Code for America, a nonprofit that uses technology to transform local governments, boasts a creative, compelling promotional video that not only clearly describes its message but also engages its viewers to get involved. In just five simple steps, any nonprofit can follow its example.

Be human and personal

1Be sure to make a personal connection early in the video. Many organizations and causes have a cohort of motivated, smiling people behind it. Bring these people to the forefront and show how upbeat and promising working for the cause is! Code for America illustrates its work environment by interviewing employees about what part of the job and cause they like. People are human and social creatures and are more inclined to stick with a video if they can relate to the on-screen subjects.

Use captivating visuals

2Watching a talking head is no fun for anyone. But listening to someone speak while looking at colorful flowers or a fun work environment is far more interesting. The supplemental footage in a video that does not capture a talking head is called b-roll. For example, Code for America’s video displays a shot of the office while founder Jennifer Pahlka speaks over it.

Get creative with light

3The video’s lighting is bright and vibrant throughout. This, quite literally, illustrates Code for America’s cause in a positive light. For example, founder Jennifer Pahlka is interviewed outside, allowing her to be shot with the warmth of natural lighting. The creative use of silhouettes, close-ups and angles, by video producers Inkerman Road, provides a nice break from the traditional head and shoulders frame.

Keep it short — under 2 minutes

4The ideal length of a web video is under 2 minutes. People love video, but attention spans today are dreadfully short. This Code for America piece clocks in at 2 minutes 30 seconds. Wistia, a popular Web video hosting service, found that the completion rate for a 30 second video is close to 90 percent, but it drops to barely more than 50 percent if the video is 2 minutes. Of course, completion rate might not be critical, as long as viewers get the important bits of your message and are happy with your video. But if the call to action is in the last 10 seconds and no one watches that far, you have a problem.  Which is why it’s a really good idea to front-load the video with the call to action and other critical message elements. Whatever you want the targeted audience to walk away knowing should be at the start of the video.

Instill optimism and hope

5Code for America does not focus on what the government is doing wrong, or why its services are necessary. That would lower the mood of viewers. Instead, the organization encourages people to take action by focusing on the future and how the combination of technology and government can improve lives, ending with a positive message: “Try helping your government work better for you and see what happens.”

Did you improve your video to make it more successful? Are you interested in learning how you could? Let us know if you’d like us to analyze your video.

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Water, the Web and high storytelling & production values

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, foundations, social enterprises, cause organizations, businesses and their corporate social responsibility (CSR) divisions, video producers, educators, journalists, general public.

This is part three of our three-part series on how nonprofits can create engaging multimedia stories that motivate supporters to take a desired action. Also see:

• Creating compelling advocacy videos for nonprofits

• How to effectively use calls to action in nonprofit videos

With more than 1.3 million Twitter followers, 210,000 Facebook likes, and an extremely accessible and interesting blog called the charity: water log, the organization charity: water has successfully tapped the social media well, so to speak. We wanted to feature charity: water here because it is a nonprofit leader in social media and also because it embodies what it means for an organization to embrace all things multimedia.

Stunning visual storytelling is the key to charity: water’s remarkable social advocacy and online fundraising success. In just five years, charity: water has brought clean, safe drinking water to more than 2 million people in 19 developing countries.

Mo Scarpelli, charity: water’s multimedia producer, recently sat down with me and shared some secrets to their success. Some 70 percent of their contributions come from online donations and online fundraisers, so it’s no wonder the organization puts so much love into its digital efforts. Scarpelli noted that charity: water’s digital storytelling drives their success – it’s how they connects and keeps in touch with their supporters. It helps that their founder, Scott Harrison, is a photographer himself and loves storytelling.

Who do they reach?

charity: water uses multimedia to express heartfelt, character-driven stories about the water crisis and the projects their donors are helping to support. Scarpelli explained that given the wide selection of content available online, website visitors are likely to tune out if their visuals are not compelling and professional looking. Crafting stories in an interesting way that people can connect with has really paid off for the organization and the people it serves.

Their most engaged supporters – their fundraisers – are inspired by and kept updated with stunning multimedia in the Stories From The Field and Campaigns To Watch sections of their website. To date, charity: water has shared 20-30 carefully crafted videos on their blog that highlight projects and the work of its donors. These videos drive home the message – about diseases from untreated water, of a woman with baby on her hip talking about the well saving one of her children and how a well enables young girls to attend school when they would otherwise have to be spending hours searching for water.

While they admit that video is what moves people the most toward their mission, charity: water’s use of still photography also brings to life many of their stories online, in print and at events. However, one of their widest reaching uses of still photography is through their Photo of The Day, a series of beautiful images accompanied by short updates designed to reach their 1.3 million Twitter followers. Supporters who want to stay connected to the charity’s work on a regular basis can count on a captivating Photo of the Day tweet every afternoon.

charity: water’s annual September campaign trailer video housed on their home page engages supporters across all channels. Scarpelli emphasizes that everyone at the company – from accountants to Web developers to their founder – are enlisted to share this high-traffic video with their personal networks and to help grow support for their cause.  This strategy has proven very successful in getting tens of thousands of video views on the launch day.

How does charity: water create such compelling stories? Read More on Major Multimedia’s blog.

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During the holiday break, Socialbrite is updating and republishing some of our most popular posts. We noticed that Jolkona is prominently featured in Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen’s new book, “Giving 2.0.” Our regular publication schedule resumes Monday.

Imet Adnan Mahmud, co-founder and CEO of Jolkona, during Beth Kanter’s book signing party for “The Networked Nonprofit” at TechSoup Global — and was immediately impressed by his seriousness and dedication to helping great causes through one-to-one philanthropy.

Jolkona is at the bleeding edge of this phenomenon, which will become an increasingly important part of charitable giving in the years ahead, as young people in particular want transparency, interaction and accountability when supporting a cause.

Adnan says Jolkona is the first nonprofit “to give tangible feedback on your donation.” Kiva, which pioneered the technique, provides entrepreneurs with loans. And while nonprofits like charity:water and Global Giving often give updates on projects, Jolkona is positioning itself as a technology platform that enables one-to-one philanthropy for nonprofits of any size.

Watch, download or embed our interview on Vimeo

The year-old Jolkona — which means “drop of water” in Bengali (Adnan is a native of Bangladesh) — currently showcases 75 projects in 35 countries, including the United States.

Jolkona’s premise is simple but powerful: Support a library in Tibet that needs $50 to buy books, and you’ll get the list of the books purchased through your donation. Help people in Bangladesh and Myanmar get an artificial limb for $200 — $200! — and you’ll receive a before and after photo. In Iraq, you can save a girl from an honor killing for $120: You get the story of the girl you saved, though for security reasons they can’t supply a name or photo. And in the U.S., you can provide field trips to a classroom of disadvantaged children in Seattle.

Says Adnan: “If you ask any nonprofit, Do you want to tell your supporters how their money was used, they’ll all tell you, Yes I do. But they don’t because they’re strapped for resources. Jolkona decided to come in and provide that technical infrastructure.

“Our focus is on youth philanthropy,” he adds. “We’re focused on galvanizing this next generation of givers. We’ve seen the frustration of this generation — that they don’t know where their money is going to. … We want people to feel that their [donation] can make a difference.”

It does, and the Jolkona team has gone out of its way to provide transparency and dispel worries that surfaced after it was revealed that Kiva wasn’t being forthright about its donations process.

Jolkona is now accepting nonprofit partners, though there’s a waiting queue. “If you are doing great work and are committed to showing impact, we are your best partners” as a platform solution, Adnan says.

The post Jolkona: Now we can all be philanthropists appeared first on Socialbrite.

Getting your supporters to take the next step when your video ends

This is part two of a three-part series on how nonprofits can create engaging multimedia stories that motivate supporters to take a desired action. Part two describes the use of call-to-action video overlays to boost ROI. Also see part one:

• Creating compelling advocacy videos for nonprofits

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, foundations, cause organizations, social enterprises, brands, businesses and their corporate social responsibility (CSR) divisions, video producers, Web publishers.

While the audience for online video continues to grow, the advances in Web video technology are changing at a dizzying pace, making it hard for nonprofits to keep up. There are several good online video platforms and third-party apps available to convert views into actions. YouTube’s call-to-action video overlay, third-party video apps and customized video domains or microsites offer great options for boosting the return on investment of your nonprofit’s video program.

YouTube’s call-to-action video overlay

Most nonprofit Web videos make mention of their organization’s URL either verbally or with graphics edited into the video. But the effectiveness of your message is cut short if you don’t include a clickable call to action that takes visitors to your website, Facebook Page or Twitter page to make a donation or to take another desired action.

YouTube’s nonprofit program offers two such call-to-action video apps that can be easily implemented: overlays and annotations.

If your nonprofit is not already part of the Google for nonprofits program, consider applying. The free program offers many benefits and can become a center for creating effective calls to action and engagement:

• Free or discounted version of Google Apps for your organization
• Premium branding capabilities and increased uploads on YouTube
• The option to drive fundraising through a Google Checkout “Donate” button
• The ability to add a call-to-action overlay on your videos to drive campaigns
• The ability to post volunteering opportunities on the YouTube Video Volunteers platform
• Free Adwords advertising

Examples of video calls to action — in action

Here are a few examples of how nonprofits have incorporated overlays and annotations to drive a specific course of action.

This Angry Kid Greenpeace video is heartfelt and does a great job delivering its message. Unfortunately, the creators stop short by simply offering engaged viewers the opportunity to visit their website at the end with no actionable link:

The Darius Goes West video takes it a step further and adds a call-to-action overlay to visit Darius’ Twitter page as part of the YouTube player:

The use of  annotations to engage the viewer and encourage interactivity can be seen in The Hug The World video (after the initial 15 second ad):

This Greenpeace video celebrating a victory over rainforest destruction also uses annotations in their call to action by encouraging the viewer to “like” the video:

Third-party video player overlays

There are several companies that have emerged recently that market call-to-action video player skins that are designed to be layered on top of players such as YouTube or Vimeo. Viewbix, for example, offers “to put the entire Web experience in the video player.”  Their software allows video creators to add elements of their websites, social networks and more into the video player so that when they share the video on Twitter, Facebook or YouTube they take all their calls-to-action and content with them.

To illustrate, Socialbrite partner Major Multimedia, a nonprofit video training and production company, created a Viewbix overlay for a video created for a client, Chicago Cares, to recognize outstanding volunteers at their awards banquet. This video is housed on Viewbix’s website but can be embedded, copied and shared.

Videos for a customized video domain or microsite

While hosting on YouTube has its advantages for nonprofits, a professional multimedia firm can help you custom-design media-driven websites and microsites that integrate with your nonprofit’s existing organizational website with platforms such as Vmix, Convio, Kaltura or Drupal (compare).

Just a little over two years ago, Pathfinder International had no videos online and little in-house video production. With the help of See3 Communications, Pathfinder launched a microsite that is built entirely around video sharing: Girl2Woman.

Pathfinder shared how they opted not to use YouTube because “we couldn’t control the look and feel as much as we would have liked, we wanted to count the shares of the videos (not the views), and we wanted to focus on integrating features like the call to action share.”  They’ve still posted the videos on YouTube, however, so that others can embed them.

They documented specific objectives for wanting viewers to share their microsite:

1. to raise the visibility of reproductive health needs throughout a woman’s life
2. to raise $1 million (and for each video share, a generous donor is giving $1 to Pathfinder)
3. to leverage the share functionality to increase the number of registrations by constituents

To meet those goals, they needed to be able to count the number of shares and capture the information of people who shared, which they couldn’t do with a YouTube hosted site.

In fact, embedding video on a nonprofit’s own website can be better for your SEO — when a video is published on a third-party site, links to those videos just increase the page rank of the third-party site, not the nonprofit’s own site. If the video is published on the nonprofit’s site they have full control over the links on that site and the corresponding SEO.

Regardless of which of these call-to-action options your nonprofit chooses, remember to:

• first build your social network & encourage conversation before inserting a call to action
• use a clear and distinct call to action that tells the viewer exactly what you want them to do
• connect viewers to URLs that elaborate on your story.

Consider placing the “call” on the skin or at the end of the video to encourage the viewer to watch until the end and follow through on the call to action. Also, because each video hosted is different, the call to action might be different depending upon the content and desired outcome.

The most important part of your call to action is ensuring that it fits with what your audience needs. When it matches the exact needs of your audience, taking the recommended next step will be a natural course of action for viewers.

Please share your own experience with call-to-action video apps and online video platforms.

Related

• Creating compelling advocacy videos for nonprofits (Socialbrite)
• Techniques to add dazzle to your advocacy video (Socialbrite)
• How to find amazing, powerful stories for your nonprofit video (Socialbrite)
• How to use microsites to better tell your nonprofit’s story (Socialbrite)
• 6 ways YouTube is helping out nonprofits, including call-to-action-overlays (Socialbrite)
• Five Nonprofits Maximizing YouTube’s Nonprofit Program (Nonprofitorgs)

The post How to effectively use calls to action in nonprofit videos appeared first on Socialbrite.

A company either makes money or does good, right? Think again

Target audience: Social enterprises, nonprofits, NGOs, foundations, businesses, educators.

By Lindsay Oberst
Socialbrite staff

Anew type of corporation has come along that makes money and does good for society and the environment. They’re called B Corporations, for benefit corporations.

Nonprofits can smile about these dual-focused companies because they make great like-minded partners, and they may help fund and support their social good goals.

A new sector of the economy

B Corporations first appeared four years ago. Today, more than 400 companies across 50 industries and several countries have achieved certification by B Lab, the nonprofit that recognizes for-profit companies as being ethical, socially aware and eco-conscious.

Basically, B Corps have to do more than report to their shareholders; they have to consider the people around them and the world they work in. Being able to stand out in the social enterprise sector is a benefit for them.

I first learned about B Corps at a meeting in Atlanta and thought they sounded like a great idea for the increasing numbers of consumers seeking good companies. Of course, people at nonprofits are often seeking out companies behaving ethically as well.

Companies know that people want to be green. B Corps cut past the marketing hype and greenwashing as companies that are truly committed to policies that promote the social good.

One thing for nonprofits to consider about B Corps

Some nonprofit leaders have come out against B Corps. They say that nonprofits might now get as much money because people will choose to back B Corps rather than nonprofits.

Others argue that B Corps will in turn fund nonprofits as well as social benefit initiatives. Jordan Chazin, a B Lab Ratings Associate, says, “Many B Corps are incorporated as C or S Corps or LLCs and are technically designated as for-profit ventures, but elect to give up to 100 percent of their profits to charity.”

A few examples of B Corporations

Freeworld Media, a B Corp, is a digital marketing group that helps companies raise awareness with social and emerging media. Sean Wood, founder and CEO, described his company becoming a B Corp in a statement earlier this year: “We are proud to be a leader in the use of social media to foster corporate social responsibility. What matters to your customers matters to your business.”

Many companies that serve mainly nonprofit customers are deciding to become B Corps, including PhilanTech, Care2 and PICnet.

“Nonprofits need tools and services to support the pursuit of their missions,’ ” says Dahna Goldstein, founder of PhilanTech. “With B Corporations, nonprofits can be confident that their service providers are also committed to social and environmental responsibility.”

Nonprofits that want more information about the relationship between nonprofits and B Corps should visit bcorpsfornonprofits.com.

As a nonprofit, what do you think about B Corporations?

Related

• 4 ways nonprofits can learn from social entrepreneurs (Socialbrite)

• The Hoop Fund makes its debut (Socialbrite)

• Catchafire: Connecting nonprofits & professionals (Socialbrite)

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It only works when it’s connected to the real world

At the National Conference on Volunteering and Service — which some folks call “the Super Bowl of nonprofit conferences” — George Weiner and I teamed up on one of the most successful Social Media for Social Good Bootcamps that Socialbrite has put on to date. (Socialbrite has put on camps in New York, San Francisco, Miami, London and elsewhere.)

For those of us who live and breathe tech and social media — me in Silicon Valley and George, CTO of DoSomething.org, in New York and Washington, DC — it’s always a good reality check to come to gatherings like this and see how the non-early adopters are faring.

The three-hour session we led yesterday offered a range of tips on how to use social media strategically for campaigns, for collaboration, for building community, and I invite you to browse through the presentation above, since the attendees found it useful: “AMAZING session” (thanks, Volunteer Centre) … “awesome, fantastic session” (thanks, NCVS) … “Great session!” (thanks, Groupon).

But there were more beginners in the crowd than I expected. For instance, only about five out of 50 particpants were using Google Analytics (the free tool every website and blog ought to have). None had heard of the Grassrootsmapping.org effort to document the Gulf oil spill, even though we’re right here in New Orleans. And only one out of 80 people (not counting me) at today’s session on data had ever used Tumblr, an easy way to post blog entries and photos.

These are good, smart, motivated people — we need to break through the barriers and connect the tools and strategies with the organizations and causes that need them, starting with the basics.

So let’s take a deep breath and remember: We still have a lot of work before us, and there’s a lot of education yet to be done.

The post A reality check on social media appeared first on Socialbrite.

At the conclusion of Socialbrite’s 3-hour Move the Needle bootcamp at Sustainatopia in Miami to help organizations — social enterprises and nonprofits — use social media for social good, I chatted with my partner Sloane Berrent about some of the tips we discussed with participants, including how to find the influencers in your sector and Sloane’s suggestion to create real-world meet-ups from your organization’s online connections.

Couldn’t be in Miami? Today I’m giving a 90-minute version of the Move the Needle presentation at 1 pm ET in my first CharityHowTo webinar. (It’s not too late to sign up!)

“You can’t be everywhere all the time,” she says in our talk — especially when social media demands conversation and interaction. So organizations should identify evangelists, influencers and brand ambassadors and seek to enlist them in your cause or organization’s mission.

Make sure you identify metrics and tie them into goals so that you can tie it into larger programs or ongoing campaigns, Sloane adds in this 6-minute interview. You have to do the homework — the hard stuff — but it gets you to the great outcomes.

There isn’t one tool out there as the complete solution to identifying influencers, but Social Mention, Klout and other tools should be part of the mix. Sloane and I suggested setting up a shared Google doc where you track influencers and your interactions with them.

Real-world meetups are important as well. “People really want to be offline” and meet up in person, she said. “Create a program online but have an event offline that brings people together to talk about your organization.”

Watch, download or embed the video on Vimeo

Since our last chat, Sloane has joined Lippe Taylor, an agency in New York, to head up digital marketing and she’s launched Help a Woman Out, helping women and girls around the world.

The post How to activate your organization’s supporters appeared first on Socialbrite.

Editor’s note: Nick Cooney is author of the new book Change of Heart: what Psychology Can Teach Us About Spreading Social Change. Below is an introduction he wrote for Socialbrite and a chapter from his book:

The non-profit world is filled with competing theories about how to create change, with many of those theories revolving around one key question: what motivates people to change their behavior? Whether you’re trying to increase donations, recruit new volunteers, or get members of the public to make a specific change in their lifestyle like eating healthy, whether you will succeed or fail depends in large part on your understanding of human psychology. As a non-profit director myself, I decided that I wanted facts and not just theories on how to more effectively influence others. I spent a year combing through the scientific record to learn proven techniques for how non-profits can more effectively persuade the public and succeed in their mission. The result: my new book, Change Of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us About Spreading Social Change. The following excerpt shares research on the role that social networks (and social networking sites) can play in helping non-profits succeed.

Excerpt: ‘Using social networks to spread change’

In taking a hypothetical look at the spread of vegetarianism, we made an assumption that the average person has about ten friends, each of those people has about ten friends, and so on. But in the real world, the number of friends a person has varies significantly from individual to individual. People who are particularly social might have many dozens of friends. Someone who is shy and reserved may have only one or two. Malcolm Gladwell uses the term connectors to describe people who have large numbers of friends and acquaintances. Other authors call these people hubs. Either way, these highly connected individuals sit at the center of vast social circles.

It’s because of connectors that the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game actually works. For those not familiar, this is a pop culture game where you try to connect actor Kevin Bacon to any other actor or actress based on the movies they’ve been in. For example if Kevin Bacon was in a movie with Danny DeVito, and Danny DeVito was in a movie with Jim Carrey, then Bacon would be two degrees away from Jim Carrey. In fact, Bacon can be connected to almost any other American actor or actress in only 3 to 4 links. This reason for this is connectors—the small number of actors who have been in a large number of movies (Barabasi).

Researcher Stanely Milgram wanted to find out how many links it would take to go from one randomly selected person in the United States to another. In other words, he wanted to find out how connected we are. To do so, he mailed out letters to randomly selected individuals in Nebraska and Kansas. In the letters he described the experiment and instructed the recipients that their goal was to get those same letters to a target person in Boston. The target’s name and information were given, but recipients were instructed to forward the letter to that person only if they knew him personally. Otherwise, they were instructed to forward the letter to whatever friend of theirs they thought most likely to know the target person in Boston. And so the letter was passed on from one friend to another, getting closer and closer to the target person. Want to take a guess as to how many times each letter was forwarded on before reaching its intended recipient?

On average, the letter reached the target person after being forwarded on only six times. So there are about six degrees of separation between any two randomly selected people in the United States. It is a small world after all—thanks in large part to connectors. Of the letters that reached the target person at his home, two thirds were sent to him by one man, a prominent clothing merchant. Of the letters that reached the target person at his office, half were sent by two other men. Connectors such as these individuals make the world a much smaller place (Travers and Milgram 1969).

One of the fundamental properties of the human social network is that most people have a small number of links (that is, friendships) but a small number of people have a large number of links. In fact about twenty percent of people hold about eighty percent of the links (Barabasi and Laslo), and research has found that genetics play a significant role in how connected a person is (Christakis and Fowler Connected 233). This 80/20 principle of uneven distribution holds roughly true for other issues as well, including the distribution of population among cities in the U.S., the size of businesses, the length of rivers (Rank–size distribution 2010) and the distribution of wealth (as of 2007, twenty percent of the U.S. population controlled ninety-three percent of the financial wealth) (Domhoff 2010). Networks like the human social network, in which links are distributed unevenly, are called scale–free models.

We’ve discussed how traits like obesity, recycling and caring about world poverty can spread through social networks, so that when one person changes their behavior they make others more likely to do the same. We’ve also discussed how some people—connectors—are linked to many more people than others. Putting these two facts together, we can see that connectors are much more influential than the average person. When they change a behavior, it will have much more of a ripple effect because they are within three degrees of separation of many more people than the average individual. Connectors are often the ones that help push trends forward, and they can make or break the success of a new idea.

Connectors who bridge different groups of people also play a vital role in the spread of ideas. Think of a randomly selected friend of yours. Now think of another randomly selected friend. Do those two friends know one another? Chances are they do. Most of us have social networks filled with friends who know one another and who share similar attitudes. An analysis of social networks on Facebook found that both altruistic and non–altruistic people had similar numbers of friends, but that they were embedded in separate networks of like–minded people (Christakis and Fowler Connected 300). The altruists stuck mostly with other altruists, and the non–altruists stuck mostly with other non–altruists. Tightly clustered groups are good for enforcing group behavior; if a lot of your friends are commenting to one another that a new health care bill is good, chances are you will agree with them. What tightly clustered groups are not good at is adopting new ideas. This is where connectors come in.

Though some connectors sit at the center of a dense cluster of friends, others are linked to a number of different clusters. For example a group of environmental activists in a small town might include one activist who is also a Republican committeeperson and a prominent member of a local church. That activist is particularly important because they can help transmit the behaviors of the environmental activists to other social circles via links of close friendship.

Some activists, particularly those who perceive themselves as having very progressive viewpoints, only want to collaborate with people who have virtually identical beliefs as them. Some activists will even refuse to work with anyone who doesn’t agree with them on an entire list of social issues—feminism, gay rights, animal rights, capitalism, etc. This attitude will create a tiny group with very similar views, but won’t help spread any of those views to the wider public. Instead of rejecting those who inhabit different social circles or have different viewpoints on other issues, we should embrace these connectors as particularly important for spreading our message to new audiences. A college social justice organization might be taken aback when a hard–partying fraternity brother shows up for a meeting, and be tempted to not take him seriously. But that person could help spread new behaviors to those in his own social circle, and might also provide the social justice organization access to a new pool of volunteers.

‘Activists should focus on changing the behaviors of connectors’

In trying to create social change, activists should focus on changing the behaviors of connectors. Because connectors are linked to so many people, or provide bridges between very different groups of people, getting a connector to make a change will have a much large ripple effect than getting an average person to make a change. For example, getting five connectors to spay or neuter their companion animal will lead to many more animals ultimately being spayed or neutered (as the effect filters to their many friends, to their friends’ friends, and to their friends’ friends’ friends) than getting five average people to do the same. Connectors spread new behaviors far (reaching a large number of people) and wide (reaching new social clusters), speeding up the spread of social change. But how can we activists find these powerful connectors?

The rise of online social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace means we now have access to detailed maps of who is linked to whom and who the major connectors are—those with the largest number of friends or followers. A small portion of these people may be friend collectors who don’t personally know as many people as their profile suggests. But for the most part, those who have more online friends really are more connected to others. This doesn’t mean that someone with one thousand Facebook friends has one thousand meaningful links through which new behaviors can be spread. As was discussed earlier, changes spread only through deep social connections. But users with a large number of friends on Facebook usually have a larger number of meaningful online connections than users with a small number of friends. Research published in The Economist found that Facebook users with one hundred fifty friends maintained a relationship with nineteen to twenty-two other users on average, whereas Facebook users with five hundred friends maintained a relationship with thirty-nine to forty-seven other users (the range in each answer represents the difference between men and women, with women being more communicative) (The Economist 2009; Byron et al.). If you’re going to be promoting your cause online, finding the major connectors and focusing some of your outreach efforts on them can create a major ripple effect.

For example, imagine that a college environmental club has started a Facebook group called “We Want Ohio State to Switch to Wind Power!” In trying to get as many group members as possible (which would show student support for the initiative), naturally those in the environmental club will first approach their friends about joining the Facebook group. But the outreach needn’t end there. By browsing through friends’ profiles and the profiles of friends of friends, club members should be able to identify 20 of the most well–connected students at the school. Club members can then befriend those individuals, and after chatting them up for a few days can tell the connectors about the wind power campaign and ask them to invite their many friends to join the group.

Mapping out networks of our friends and our friends’ friends on these sites was made a little easier by the development of applications that automatically create such maps. The Twitter Mention Map Application (Mention Map) shows which other users a tweeter is talking about. The Facebook Social Graph application (Social Graph) plots a graph of all of your Facebook friends and their connections to one another. One major limitation of this and similar applications for Facebook and MySpace is that those currently in existence only allow you to look at users with one degree of separation from you. So you can find which of your friends are the most well–connected to other friends of yours, but you can’t see which of your friends are the most well–connected to the wider world. Furthermore, you can only look up your own social network map, and not anyone else’s. Perhaps more advanced applications will be developed in the future to allow mapping to at least two degrees of separation.

Despite their limitations, the graphing applications currently available can still be useful in helping increase your influence as an activist. For example, let’s say you’re holding a major conference and you want as many people from your social network as possible to come out. Naturally, you’re going to invite all of your Facebook friends to come to the event and post about it repeatedly on your wall. However after mapping which of your friends are the biggest connectors in your social circle, you can contact the five or ten most connected individuals and ask them to also post about the event to their wall. That way many of the people in your social circle will be hearing about the event not just from you, but from several other of their Facebook friends—making it more likely they’ll attend.

There are doubtlessly other ways to locate and use connectors to promote your activist cause. Think about the people you know and pick out those couple friends who seem to know everyone. Make a mental (or written) note of who these people are, and be sure to put special emphasis on talking to them when promoting an event, a behavior change, a fundraising drive or anything else.

Moving on from our immediate friends, there are other very visible connectors in society. Politicians, prominent businesspeople and civic leaders are major connectors, interacting with and befriending a wide variety of people. Whatever behavior an activist organization is promoting, it would make sense to put special emphasis on getting campaign materials in the hands of connectors like these. If an average person decides to go vegetarian, several dozen of that person’s friends will find out and maybe think about doing the same themselves. If a city council member goes vegetarian the many hundreds of people that the council member interacts with will find out about it, creating much larger ripples.

Preventing a behavior from spreading

Some activist organizations aren’t trying to spread a particular behavior, they’re trying to prevent a behavior from spreading or reduce its prevalence in society. Examples include efforts to stop the spread of AIDS, to reduce the number of smokers and to reduce the number of obese Americans. Here too, targeting the connectors in a network will lead to much greater success than targeting the general population. AIDS prevention efforts should focus first on providing condoms and doing regular HIV testing of the biggest connectors: prostitutes and others with large numbers of sexual partners. By working with the most–connected one percent of the population, a non–profit can do as much to stop the spread of AIDS as they would have by working with a much larger percentage of the general population (Barabasi 139–142).

Christakis and Fowler conducted some theoretical research on how to deal with the spread of new diseases when widespread immunization takes a lot of time and a lot of money, and when there may not be enough supply to go around. For example the 2009 swine flu pandemic went on for months before vaccines were made available to the general population. Until there was enough supply to vaccinate everyone, what should federal health agencies have done? Reserved vaccines for those most susceptible to the illness, such as young children? Reserved them for those who had money to pay for them? Or distributed them on a first–come, first–served basis until they ran out?

Christakis and Fowler looked at what would happen if instead of immunizing everyone against a disease, the government focused on immunizing those who were most connected. The pair found that immunizing the thirty percent of the population that is most connected would do just as much to prevent the spread of the disease as immunizing ninety-nine percent of the population at random (Christakis and Fowler Connected 133).

Researcher David Bahr and colleagues wondered if they could create a model to replicate the way that obesity spread through the Framingham Heart Study participants. They created a computer simulation with several hundred thousand fictitious people, inserted a small percentage of obese individuals in to the mix, and let the simulation begin. Slowly, obesity began to spread through the simulated population in a way similar to how it had happened among the Framingham participants. Now that Bahr and his team had created a good model for the spread of obesity, they turned to their main question: how could the spread of obesity be stopped, or reversed?

One solution that worked extremely well in the simulated model was to have people diet not with friends but with friends of friends. That way the social norm of dieting was spread further through the social network and its influence was wider–reaching. It also put particular social pressure on the mutual friend (the person who knows both dieters) to make a similar change. When Bahr and his colleagues plugged this technique into their virtual society, the obesity epidemic began to reverse itself. In fact they found that it could be reversed quickly with only one percent of the population initially going on a diet, as long as the dieters were placed in the right spots throughout the social network (Bahr et al. 2009). Of course, such precision is not possible in the real world. But the fact remains that focusing on friends of friends can have more of an impact at spreading change than focusing on friends, and that it doesn’t take a large percentage of people to initiate sweeping social change.

What appears to be most effective stands in contrast to the initial impulse most of us have upon changing our own behavior, which is to talk about the change with those close to us. When a person learns about the environmental impact of plastic bottles, they’ll typically want to let their co–workers, friends and family members know about what they’ve learned and encourage them to stop buying bottled water. The same is true for a person who has just donated to the victims of a natural disaster or bought a hybrid car. Yet the research indicates that instead of focusing on these people, if we really want to spread that behavior we should focus on their friends.

Online social networks make connecting with friends of friends extremely easy. For example, if you post the following update on your Facebook page or Twitter feed, a couple hundred people might see it: “Undercover investigation: male chicks are ground up alive by egg industry! Video at http://tinyurl.com/mzamns. Please don’t eat eggs!” On the other hand, if you ask ten friends to post it on their Facebook pages or Twitter feeds then several thousand people (friends of friends) will see the posting, and your ten friends will be very likely to watch the video as well. If both you and a friends’ friend stop eating eggs, not only will that behavior ripple out across a much wider set of networks, but your mutual friend becomes more likely to stop eating eggs as well.

Alternatively, activists could contact friends of friends directly via social networking websites. “Hi, my name is Nick, we’re both friends of Michael Brown. I wanted to let you know the non–profit I work for is having a walkathon to help animals next month; if you’re interested in taking part here’s the website…” Not only do you reach a wider audience, but you also make it more likely that your immediate friends will come out to join the walkathon as well. Even if you don’t use social networking sites you can put this technique to use the old–fashioned way by asking your friends to put you in touch with friends of theirs who might be interested in your cause.

We might also set up situations where we introduce to one another two friends of ours who are making a similar change but who don’t know one another. For example an environmental activist might have two acquaintances who are both in the process of trying to reduce their home energy use. By introducing these two acquaintances to one another the activist provides them additional social support, which makes them more likely to succeed and helps the ripple effect of their changes get spread over a wide social network. It’s also possible that the two budding environmentalists have other mutual friends who could become influenced to reduce energy usage as well.

In working for social change, we as activists need to recognize that connections matter when it comes to spreading new behaviors through society. By focusing outreach efforts on connectors, befriending new connectors and involving friends of friends in our efforts, we can create large ripple effects that create more change more quickly.

The post Using social networks to spread change appeared first on Socialbrite.

Note from Beth Kanter: Jumo, the long anticipated social network site for social change, launched this week. Many of us have been up early playing with Jumo, setting up our individual profiles and finding issues and organizations or setting up profiles for organizations. It is still clearly in beta, with the usual tech glitches and 500 errors, which will smooth out as more people play with it and give them feedback. As the platform matures,  we’ll get a better sense of the power and potential of this network that lets people find, connect, and support social change organizations and issues. 

The platform was seeded with some initial organization profiles and a focused set of issues. The organizations are  a combination of  smaller, progressive organizations like Ushahidi and the Sunlight Foundation and large venerable institutions like NPR and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Anyone can set up a profile for an organization (it prompts for an  EIN number (but not required) and Facebook account url) and you can opt to be the administrator. Charities outside the US can set up a profile. To generate a robust profile, your organization should be able to plug in existing social media presences (Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, blog RSS feed, etc.) so it seems to favor organizations that have already established a social media content strategy.

My colleague Steve MacLaughlin offers his  first take on Jumo. If you have had a change to play with Jumo and have some insights, please share in the comments.

Guest post by Steve MacLaughlin

What is Jumo?

Jumo means “together in concert” in Yoruba, a West African language. But it’s also the latest online creation of Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook and director of online organizing for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. Details about the project have been hard to come by over the past few months, but here’s what we know:

Connecting individuals and organizations

Since the beginning, Hughes has said that Jumo is “an online platform to connect individuals and organizations working to change the world.” GuideStar does have Jumo International listed as a nonprofit organization but very little information is shown and likely won’t be until they file their first 990 with the IRS.

Chris Hughes: “We’ll be matching people based on their skills and interests with organizations around the world that need their input. It’s a discovery process that first matches, then helps people build relationships, then let’s people share their resources.”

Jumo has raised at least $2 million in funding from individuals and foundations. About $500,000 came from unnamed individuals in the early days and in September 2010, Omidyar Network announced a grant of up to $750,000. By November 2010, Jumo noted in a New York Times article that they’ve raised $3.5 million.

Who’s on the Jumo team

Chris Hughes brought in Kirsten Titus as Managing director of Jumo. She brings experience from working in and around the nonprofit sector. Hughes also enlisted Scott Thomas, former director of design with the Obama campaign and author of Designing Obama. He has also put together a team of advisers including Jeffrey David Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO of the Acumen Fund, and Linda Rottenberg, CEO and Co-founder of Endeavor.

Chris Hughes: “We saw on the Obama campaign you’ve got to combine content and technology to facilitate action. The most important factor in spurring someone to action is timely, personally and relevant content delivered carefully and consistently over an extended period of time.”

Jumo has since hired several developers and is paying out a $5,000 referral fee to people. There are still some job openings, including a Monetization Director to help Jumo “achieve financial self-sustainability through the development of revenue-generating products.”

Where: Active in real and online worlds

Jumo set up its offices in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood. They have also been very active on Facebook and Twitter along with a few entries on the Jumo blog. Not to mention a lot of press coverage in The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Mashable, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, and The New York Times.

How it works

The Jumo website had its private beta launch back on March 18, 2010. In the very early days of the website, they had visitors answer a series of questions about interests, skills, and cause activities. Two of the questions were “Which of these places would you most like to visit? Argentina, France, India, or Kenya?” and “On Sunday, are you most likely to be: at brunch, at church, at a museum, or watching the big game?” It’s unclear what was done with the information captured and that area of the website has been inaccessible for some time now.

Chris Hughes: “The last thing I want to do is add yet another site to a nonprofit’s plate. I don’t want them to have to go to yet another destination to share who they are and the work that they’re doing.”

The public beta launch of Jumo Tuesday will help users find causes to match their interests, likes and preferences. Users will be able to follow nonprofits to receive updates in their news feed and will be able to support those organizations in a variety of ways.

Jumo users must have a Facebook account and are walked through three simple steps to register for the website: Create Your Account, Your Interests, and Create Your Profile. After giving Jumo some basic details and your interests the site lets you start picking projects that you are interested in. Jumo was seeded with more than 3,000 issues and groups, but anyone with a social mission can create a page. The site then uses your location to show organizations in your area.

After completing these first few steps the screen then shows your very own social media dashboard with information about the organizations you are following. This is also where the connection to your Facebook account comes into play. Your friends on Facebook that have Jumo accounts also start to appear in the “Talk” sidebar of the website.

What also becomes clear very quickly is that organizations that have embraced the use of social media get a lot more leverage on Jumo. National Wildlife Federation, for example, is very active on various social networking websites and they immediately appeared in several places on my Jumo page.

The upshot: How Jumo may make a difference

Jumo is not the first initiative to use social media in the nonprofit sector and it won’t be the last. Will millions of people sign-up, actively participate, and help drive change? My guess would be as accurate as anyone else at this point. But this is an important step for the nonprofit sector and its move into the digital age.

The New York Times published an article on the day of Jumo’s launch. My favorite quote sums things up: “It’s still not clear whether or not followers translate to volunteers and donors. But people that are more engaged with nonprofits are most likely to become a donor or support them in another way.”

We are entering a new period where people from outside the nonprofit sector are going to try their hand at driving change. They bring with them new ideas, approaches, and tools to engaging with people. Their experience comes from a digital perspective and there is no such thing as “we’ve always done it this way.” Organizations trying to change the world can certainly benefit from changes in how they engage with supporters.

What you think of Jumo’s potential?

Related

• Coming soon: Jumo, a social network for nonprofits (Socialbrite)

• A Facebook Founder Begins a Social Network Focused on Charities (New York Times)

• First Reflections on Jumo (Amy Sample Ward)

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