A Closer Look At Chase Giving 2012 Winners’ Social Media Strategies

The 2012 Chase Community Giving Contest ended on Wednesday after 12 days of incessant pleas for votes from thousands of nonprofits competing for $5M in grants. Below is a brief look at the social media reach and strategies of some of the top winners.

Surprisingly, for a contest driven by Facebook, none of these groups have an incredibly large Facebook following comparatively for similar sized organizations. The top two winners have strong international ties, both relying heavily on votes from international users and posting pleas in foreign languages. Not surprisingly, each of these groups very successfully used Facebook images to communicate their message and amplify their “Share” power.

Some lessons learned this year: when it comes to garnering big numbers of social media votes, your organization’s Facebook following isn’t as important as the clout of outside parties you recruit to ask for votes on your behalf–particularly the partner’s ability to mobilize international users. How successfully you activate your own Facebook group is perhaps even of negligible importance when it comes to winning big. Organizations that focused on maximizing relationships and successfully enrolling international partners to “Share” and ask for votes on their behalf did very well.

• Top winner at 93K+ votes – Egyptian Cancer Network (ECN)

Though ECN has a modest Facebook following at 17K fans, they appeared to gain most of their momentum through “Shares” of this blow-by-blow instructional image on how to vote on behalf of the Asa7be Sarcasm Society, a group with 806,000 Facebook fans.

• Second place winner at 60K+ votes – Help Nepal Network (HeNN)

• Third place winner at 47K+ votes – VT Seva

Though VT Seva does have an international presence, they didn’t appear to appeal to international users. Most notably, this organization utilized the website splash page tool suggested in the help guide provided by Chase Community Giving.

• Notable Mention: Fifth Place at 20K+ votes – World Environmental Organization (Rescue Me!)
  
  

Taking a closer look at the winners, we see that as with past contests, organizations best able to leverage their social media base in specific ways relevant to the design of that particular contest soar to the top. The Chase Community Giving contest has drawn criticism for technical deficiency,  exploitation of nonprofit brands for Chase’s PR gain and accusations of fraud. This is presumably why the contest structure has changed so much since it’s inception in 2009, most significantly, so that each participant can only vote 1-3 times and participation is limited to organizations with an annual budget below $1M. Cheers to the organizations who developed the best strategy for the 2012 contest and mobilized international users to vote in droves!

More reading on the 2012 contest: Are Online Philanthropy Contests Worth The Effort? – Chronicle of Philanthropy

Best Of: Sh*t Nonprofit People Say

I was invited recently to participate in the making of Sh*t Nonprofit People Say video, produced by Dawn and Brian Crawford of BC/DC Ideas, conceived and written by Melinda McKee in collaboration with Beth Eiserloh-Johnson, Nick DiColandrea and myself.

I’m happy to say the video got a great reception and we just reached 20K views!

Off all the nonprofit jargon, bad stereotypes and buzz words, there were several crowd favorites as seen in the Youtube comments below:

reelee16: ”mission drift”. a new classic! ps, I have said most of these things this week (if not today).

ActivateGood: HA! My favorite: “Did you see their 990?”

Todd Culpepper: ”I love my job!” ”I hate my job!” We nonprofit execs can all relate to that!

pergish1: I would starve if it weren’t for the leftover [board meeting] food.

ncgreenpower: NICE!!!! I totally say so many of those – in fact just yesterday I wrote in an email, “So this is a no-cost sponsorship?” LOL Great job to all my friends in the video!! Awesome work.

BritFitzpatrick: So I’m asking all of my friends…” LOL So me.

Beyond9s: Can you tell me the ROI for this project?

PAAL323: Hahaha! The non-profit I work for TOTALLY has founders syndrome.

And, best use overall use of nonprofit jargon goes to MrMrPremise:

Just one question: Would you say this is a development issue or a service delivery issue? Much in this video does not appear to be evidence-based. This makes it difficult to know if we are adhering to best practices or maximizing outcomes.

NC Arts Organizations Use Twitter to Reach New Audiences

Originally posted on the Triangle Artworks blog, this is a cross post I wrote this Spring. Triangle Artworks is a NC Triangle-based provide the services, support and resources necessary to cultivate and ensure a vibrant creative community in the Triangle. Follow @TriArtWorks on Twitter. 

Across the Triangle and throughout the state, arts organizations are tapping Twitter to reach and engage new audiences. Using social media enables arts organizations to affordably reach thousands of people with their messages. Of course, using social media to drive ticket sales and donations is notoriously hard to track. Though return on investment for a social media campaign often isn’t immediately quantifiable financially, Twitter is a proven and affordable tool for generating buzz, expanding your exposure and amplifying your message about performances, events and overall mission.

Below is a short study about how Carolina Ballet and the Southern Entrepreneurship in the Arts Conference each used Twitter for these purposes. The key in each case was to enroll supporters in reaching out to their networks on behalf of the organization. Thus, the organization’s message reaches thousands of members within their supporters’ networks – both your supporters’ existing arts supporter friends and some future arts supporters, no doubt.

Photo by Chris Walt Photography

Organized by Melinda McKee, ballet supporter and communications professional, Carolina Ballethosted the first in a series of Tweet Seats events during the dress rehearsal for September 2011’s performance of Black and White Swan. The Ballet hosted about 15 supporters to take a sneak peak at the dress rehearsal performance and, from seclusion in the balcony, tweet every detail.  Carolina Ballet’s performance became one of the top ten trending Twitter topics in Raleigh that evening, reaching thousands of people through the tweet seats participants’ tweets – not to mention the retweets and mentions from members of their networks. Read more about the second Carolina Ballet Tweet Seats event promoting Dracula at Tweet Seats participant Lisa Sullivan’s blog.

To regain momentum cultivated during the first annual Southern Entrepreneurship in the Arts Conference (SEA), organizers from the North Carolina Entrepreneurship Center increased marketing across multiple channels during 2012 for the third annual conference. Additionally, Conference Coordinator Marshall Rollings and I arranged a live tweet, sending quotes from SEA speakers, pictures from the conference and bits of dialogue from conference attendees into the Twitterverse.

The live tweet surpassed expectations and achieved our goal to generate more buzz before, during, and after the conference. More than 25 tweeters, both attendees and non-attendees – from across the U.S. and as far away as Australia – tuned in to participate in the live tweet, logging 350+ tweets and 50+ retweets. Read more about the live tweet in the Americans for the Arts ARTSblog post. See also the Live Tweet case study.

Today is Give InterPlay Day!

We have a lot of splits in our lives, writes Phil Porter, Co-founder of InterPlay, in Having it All: Mind, Body, Heart and Spirit Together Again At Last.

“Splits between body, mind, heart, and spirit… splits between what we know deep inside and what we are willing to admit…We split up into racial and ethnic groups and different religious denominations…We split our corporations and organizations into parts that rarely communicate with each other…”

-Phil Porter

Where is a girl to find wholeness?

Yet, Phil writes, “The bits and pieces of our lives can be brought together like the multicolored threads of a tapestry.”

InterPlay is an international community of people cultivating wholeness and weaving a multicolored tapestry through play, storytelling and movement. The InterPlay community practices life-giving activities such as creative play, affirmation, noticing and easy focus.

I discovered InterPlay when I had the pleasure of participating in InterPlay’s 2011 Art and Social Change residency for millennial leaders, an incredibly nourishing and generous experience facilitated by national InterPlay leaders. Read more about my experience.

I’m thrilled to say today is Give InterPlay Day – your opportunity to learn more and to join folks like myself who have decided to support this movement financially. Today your gift to any InterPlay region will be matched with a gift to the national office. Join the fun and give today!

#SEACon2012 Live-Tweet Recap Part 1: Keynote with Beverly McIver

More than 350 participants from five states and students from 18 universities attended the third annual Southern Entrepreneurship in the Arts Conference 2012 this Saturday February 11th at University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s Elliot Student Center, hosted by the Entrepreneurship Center at UNCG.

I had the pleasure of live-tweeting the conference. I engaged in dialogue with both attendees and non-attendees from Australia and across the U.S. through 300+ tweets logged to the #SEACon2012 conversation! Thanks to Bryan Toney, Diane H.B. Welsch, Jan Szelkowski and Marshall Rollings of the Entrepreneurship Center for working with me! 

See also Recap Part 2 and Recap Part 3. Did you attend the conference? What did you think? Comment below!

Beverly said that as a young person growing up in the projects in Greensboro,  she didn’t feel worthy of winning. Now she is an award-winning artist recently featured in the New York Times.

Beverly said the first step to achieving your dreams is to know yourself. The better you know yourself, the better equipped you are to love yourself. If you love yourself, you can fully inhabit your dreams and ambitions. In addition, Beverly offered a few more tips –

 On time-management:

It’s important to time-track, Beverly said. We spend a lot of time doing nothing — and that is OK. But we must be aware. Beverly, for instance, does nothing all day on Mondays. She stays in bed all day. Tuesdays, she pays her bills. Beverly schedules studio time from 8pm to 2am and treats it like office hours. It’s a job. “I show up on time,” Beverly said.

On funding and grants:

Do you feel worthy of applying for a grant? You should, Beverly said. Apply for a local grant before you apply for a national grant. ”North Carolina is a good state in which we support the arts,” Beverly said.

Often, you must be nominated to receive national grants, Beverly said. You’ve got to know your community. Your fellow artists and colleagues–particularly those who’ve already won the awards–are often the ones who nominate you for such awards.

On goal setting and achieving your dreams:

“We need some goals,” Beverly advised. Being an artist is like running a business. You need to have a plan, she said.

Some of Beverly’s goals? To live near her best friends, who will remind her that she is worthy. To be debt free (“Oh, LORD”). For students to say about her later, “She was generous.” To own a Porsche hybrid. To have someone else scoop her cat’s litter box. To be featured on the cover of Art in America.

Keep your goals to yourself initially, Beverly said. Many people will tell you, “you shouldn’t do this.”

Beverly shared some final words for us: “You are worthy.” Develop a mantra and tell yourself this everyday, she said.

“This is a journey, and it’s not about rushing to the end of it.” Indeed, Beverly is an accomplished artist with big dreams who seems happy creating right now — ever on her way to achieving the next goal: never again having to scoop her cat’s litter box.

#SEACon2012 Live-Tweet Recap Part 2: Jim Dodson

More than 350 participants from five states and students from 18 universities attended the third annual Southern Entrepreneurship in the Arts Conference 2012 this Saturday February 11th at University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s Elliot Student Center, hosted by the Entrepreneurship Center at UNCG.

I had the pleasure of live-tweeting the conference. I engaged in dialogue on Twitter with both attendees and non-attendees from Australia and across the U.S. through 300+ tweets logged to the #SEACon2012 conversation! 

See also Recap Part 1 and Recap Part 3.

  – Plenary with Jim Dodson

Lunch speaker Jim Dodson began his travels in darkness. “All creativity begins in darkness,” he reminded us with Julia Cameron’s words. Having traveled through darkness, Jim is now an award-winning author, golf journalist and magazine editor.

Jim’s winding story begins in Greensboro and leads to early dreams of becoming the next Hemingway, writing for the News and Record and later Yankee Magazine, golfing adventures in Scotland, publishing several best-selling books, accidentally insulting famous golfers’ wives and, most recently, establishing two successful arts and culture niche magazines in North Carolina.

Jim had this to say: discover your unshakable dream, work to make an authentic contribution to your craft and doors will open. If you take after Jim, you’ll have a blast along the way.

A crowd favorite, Jim offered a wealth of tweet-ready pearls to #SEACon2012 attendees:

Develop a spiritual practice to root your creative process.

@coolmcjazz chimes in from Washington, D.C.

On monetizing your craft:

Industries change and new opportunities emerge. Innovate and keep moving. Take for example entrepreneur clubs that raise capital for local start-ups. The publishing industry is in upheaval too. Jim predicts independent bookstores will soon make a come back!

Conference attendee @KSVintageGarden captures an exciting moment in Dodson's speech

Advice along the way:

Jim is at a turning point himself. He is taking his own advice to pursue his passion authentically and courageously. No longer interested in sports writing, he plans to take the plunge into writing about his old love: Southern gospel and folk music –

Jim moves forward through the darkness, alongside all artist-entrepreneurs, with courage and creativity. We trust that light will continue to emerge. Hear hear!

#SEACon2012 Live-Tweet Recap Part 3: Breakout Sessions

More than 350 participants from five states and students from 18 universities attended the third annual Southern Entrepreneurship in the Arts Conference 2012 this Saturday February 11th at University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s Elliot Student Center, hosted by the Entrepreneurship Center at UNCG.

I had the pleasure of live-tweeting the conference. I engaged in dialogue on Twitter with both attendees and non-attendees from Australia and across the U.S. through 300+ tweets logged to the #SEACon2012 conversation!

See also Recap Part 1 and Recap Part 2.

 – Plenary with Jim Gallucci and Pat Gray

Sculptor Jim Gallucci and BioMusic Specialist Pat Gray discussed the value and practice of collaboration: 

Pat and Jim both agreed that with collaborative endeavors, the project is more important than any one person.

The most important quality in collaboration, Pat said, is the ability to weave participants in a way in which they can “own” the project.

Pat ended by challenging us to join the collaborative movement:

@PaperCatTales tunes in from Australia

George Scheer, Co-Founder of Elsewhere Artists Collaborative, wants to engage the greater community and people on the fringe–those unsure even if they want to go to “a living art museum”–in public art-making. Tune in to the conversation to learn more about some of Elsewhere’s community art projects:

George’s work has also played an important role in revitalizing downtown Greensboro. Now, 300-400 people visit Elsewhere on a typical First Friday night.

George is also involved in reclaiming a fenced-in former Soviet-era amusement park in Berlin now called Kulturpark.

Elsewherians started a community garden, a store-front window theater and have plans to open a library this year to further engage the public.

@ArtsNC joins in Katie's enthusiasm about Elsewhere

– with Jimmy Hunt of Yellow Dog Entertainment, Ryan Barringer of Technic Productions, Marshall Rollings, Rasheem Pugh and  Moderator Joe Erba

Some highlights from young artist-entrepreneur panel discussion:

Though only one of the four entrepreneurs began a formal business plan, all began with passion, drive and helpful mentors.

Each entrepreneur emphasized the importance of surrounding oneself with a team of people who understand the vision and take it seriously.

Jimmy advised entrepreneurs to utilize the strategic planning tool, SWOT, and to gather as much data as possible before launching.

Entrepreneur Marshall Rollings emphasized the importance of time management and staying on top of your schedule, as did Beverly McIver in the keynote. He also suggested performance artists check out Yap Tracker for resources and audition notifications.

Margaret Collins, Executive Director of Center for Creative Economy (CCE), “North Carolina’s Network for Innovation,” spoke about momentum around the creative economy in the NC Triad area:

More than 30,000 people in the Triad area are employed in the creative economy, which includes industries such as game and software design, entertainment and arts. The creative economy is the ninth largest sector in this area.

Attendee @terrylkennedy chimes in from another breakout session

Tools: CCE is developing the Idea Index (launching late 2012), an initiative to build creative economy infrastructure. The Idea Index is an online platform offering services to creatives such as portfolio-sharing, forum, RFP and job listings.

Tools: New CCE website (launching later this week!) will include helpful resources and links including a job preparation/search tool for creative economy subsectors.

Tools: Industry partner, EverWondr, offers a comprehensive web listing of arts and culture events taking place in cities throughout the Triad. See: Explore Greensboro

Triad area CCE programs: Triad Design Leadershop (design thinking training for local leaders), Creatini events (networking and idea sharing), Innovation Summit workshops and Triad Creative Showcase tours

CCE works with local companies such as Hanes and RJ Reynolds to help cultivate corporate innovation.

Check out the #SEACon2012 hashtag archive for more conversation about these presentations.

Session 1: Running a Creative Business: How to Avoid Hitting the Panic Button with Jo Solér – Your Novel: From Yellow Pad to Published Book with Michael Parker, Kathy Pories, Megan Fishmann and Moderator Terry Kennedy – 400 Seconds: 4 Visual Artists Share Their Success Stories with Jim Paulsen, Dave Thomas, Leigh Maddox, Jim Barnhill and Coordinator Mario Gallucci

Session 2: Building a Professional Practice with Gwen Rukenbrod - Making a Living as an Actor through a Non-Profit with Charlie & Ruth Jones - Making Music for a Lifetime with Woody Faulkner

@jmknc tunes in from Raleigh, NC

Session 3: Getting Known: Creating Promotion and Awareness for the Visual Artist with Xandra Eden – It’s My Pitch Party with Darell Hunt – Marketing, Financing and Legal Advice for Creative Business with Adam Tarleton, Sue Sassman, Ryan Whitehurst and Moderator Bryan Toney

Tuning into Arts + Entrepreneurship: #SEACon2012

Let’s talk about building sustainable income and careers as creatives and arts-entrepreneurs! Let’s talk with highly gifted artists and entrepreneurs about their vision and some of the “a-ha” moments in the careers! Let’s talk about the leaders, networks and initiatives that comprise our region’s creative economy!

Are you registered for Southern Entrepreneurship in the Arts Conference, this Saturday February 11 at University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s Elliot Student Center?

If not, I suggest you register now! And if you can’t come, I have good news for you: I’ll be live-tweeting the entire conference (including the Iron Pour Friday with Sculptor Jim Gallucci).

Follow our hashtag,

• #SEACon2012 

Saturday 9am – 6pm to catch snippets, quotes, links and resources from the conference. Use the hashtag to chime in with your comments too! Then, check back here Monday the 13th for a series of posts about the conference sessions.

So, what’s on Saturday?

Well,

Beverly McIver, Greensboro-born award winning artist featured in the new documentary, Raising Renee — on being “Worthy of Winning” (featured in the NY Times yesterday)

and

Jim Dodson, critically-acclaimed author, golf journalist and Editor of award-winning PineStraw Arts & Culture Magazine  – on “The Art and Soul of Creating a Good Magazine”

among other sessions.

See the conference schedule and tune in on Twitter #SEACon2012 this Saturday 9am-6pm!

NCSU Center Stage Mixes it Up With Prophets of Funk for 40th Anniversary

Clad in platform shoes, a suede-fringe jacket and three-inch afro, the performer asks the 500+ audience in NCSU’s Stewart Theater to raise each hand in a peace sign as Sly & the Family Stone’s “Higher” plays.

Next, the audience is on its feet, peace signs floating in the air, singing in response to the performer’s prompt: “hiiii-gher — HIIII-GHER.” It’s all very fitting and un-cheesy at the end of an hour-long tribute to funk which lightly (dare I say playfully?) tangled the strife of the civil rights movement with colorful moments that suggest, yes, we can transcend our differences.

The performers invite audience members on stage to dance. After thirty seconds of chaos, a gush of women and men in dresses, jeans and skirts flood the stage. More audience members are dancing on the stage than are sitting in the audience, it appears.

Minutes later, David Dorfman (Artistic Director) and the Prophets of Funk company have joined the audience in the adjoining ballroom for after-party dancing to DJ Ras J‘s mixing, mock tails and eats.

Outside the dark theater, audience members get a close look at one another. People of all ages and races again join on the dance floor — retired and middle-aged patrons, students, funk-aficionados, faculty and staff members with their significant others — to celebrate the performance they just witnessed. They have also gathered to celebrate NCSU Center Stage‘s 40 years of presenting exceptional performance art experiences such as this.

As it turns out, David Dorfman Dance (DDD) and the Prophets of Funk company is in Raleigh for the final stop of a tour around the Southeast. The performance in Raleigh Saturday, February 4th, presented by Center Stage, is also the culmination of a community residency in Raleigh. Among other projects, the residency included a free live preview at Artspace for Downtown Raleigh’s ever-popular First Friday Gallery Walk.

With an interest in community-based projects and engaging audiences in challenging but hopeful dialogue about social change, DDD aims to encourage audiences that “in the face of the funk of life there is hope.”

Encore!

Read more about NCSU Center Stage, David Dorfman Dance and Prophets of Funk.

The Intersection of Social Media and Fundraising

Sure, your nonprofit organization has 5,489 “Likes” on Facebook and 1,710 followers on Twitter. Do these supporters give financially? How can you better engage them in giving?

I was fortunate to sit down with the NC Triangle Project LIFT community yesterday to hear a presentation by fabulous social media and marketing consultant Dawn Crawford of BC DC Ideas about this confounding topic. I’m grateful to Dawn for sharing her expertise with us for the #npintersect workshop.

Dawn Crawford of BC DC Ideas

The gist of the conversation was that most nonprofit organizations are still experimenting with social media and should continue to do so, closely analyzing the data and responses in order to build a customized strategy. No one-size-fits-all strategy exists, as various nonprofit supporter groups interact differently with social media, just as no one-size-fits-all development plan exists.

Dawn shared an instance in which a client built an engaged supporter base on Facebook, enabling the client to post multiple fundraising appeals a week to their Facebook page, a practice she doesn’t usually recommend.

Below, I’ve captured some of Dawn’s best practices:

Tools and Tips

Strategy through data analysis: Familiarize yourself with Hootsuite Pro ($5 per month) and Google Analytics (free) to track and analyze your data — number of click-thrus, donations resulted, loss of “likes”, etc.– in order to begin identifying where your social media “sweet spots” are and how your supporter base responds to various appeals and applications.

[Extra juicy tip:] Dawn strongly suggests utilizing peer-to-peer fundraising platform CauseVox — engage your supporters to ask their networks for donations on your behalf!

Converse; provide value: Don’t be afraid to ask for money from your supporter base via social media once you have dedicated time and resources to providing valuable information and conversation about a cause you both believe in.

Engage often: Find ways to further engage your most active users. Publicly acknowledge them, send them updates or exclusive information before it is released, or simply ask for a retweet or a repost. Consider transitioning to a face-to-face connection: invite them to coffee or a brown bag lunch to talk about their interests and involvement.

[Extra juicy tip:] Ask supporters and bloggers to write a blog post about your cause or next event to build momentum and drive visits to your site.

Diversify: Consider looking beyond Facebook and Twitter. Dawn shared that some organizations have seen a 20% increase in giving upon supplementing the existing appeal with video media. Youtube may be the next frontier in online fundraising. Additional applications to check out: Foursquare, blogging, Philanthroper.

Build a Campaign

Set your plan: Use your data analysis to build a time-limited (30 days maximum) campaign plan utilizing your social media avenues that is integrated with your existing communications. Start small and replicate successful aspects of your campaign.

General content: Consider the frequency of your posts. Dawn shared that a general practice is posting several Twitter updates per day and posting one Facebook update per day, though again, this varies. Use a cohesive creative theme to integrate various media into your content. For Facebook: personal, less-formal, visual-oriented material (photos, videos); for Twitter: information-sharing content about your cause.

Fundraising content: Include a clear call to action. Consider the ratio of fundraising appeals to other content posted on your social media . One best practice is a 20-to-1 ratio of regular content to fundraising content. Use your “laundry list” of donation returns to show impact (i.e. a Facebook post that reads: $20 buys three meals for homeless folks in our city. Donate here). Also, don’t ask for $500 on Facebook! Social media donation amounts tend be be in the range of $5 to $50.

[Extra juicy tip:] During the course of your social media fundraising campaign, you will see a spike at the beginning, a lull in the middle and another spike toward the end. Consider ways to generate interest and response toward the middle. Dawn shared an example of offering a contest during the mid-campaign lull in which every supporter who retweets or re-posts a portion of the appeal wins a free T-shirt.

Resources

See Dawn’s collection of case studies and follow the BC DC Ideas blog for tips. If you’re lucky, catch another of Dawn’s presentations!

See Beth Kanter’s social media best practices for nonprofits and case studies