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Author Archives: Derek Lieu
June 29, 2012, 10:00 am
YouTube Gives Video Makers New Ways to Support Causes
Charities will soon have a new way for their supporters to use videos to help raise awareness and money on their behalf.
YouTube said Wednesday it is allowing video makers to link directly from videos to pages on the fundraising and petition sites DonorsChoose.org, Change.org, Causes.com and Rockethub.com.
In addition to those four sites, YouTube in April began allowing links to the sites Kickstarter.com and Indiegogo.com, which use crowd-sourcing techniques to seek donations.
Jessica Mason, a YouTube spokeswoman, said the company decided it was important to give nonprofits and their supporters the opportunity to have more ways to raise money and awareness through videos that are posted on the site. “The idea is to take platforms that are already using the power of crowds and make it easy for any YouTuber to support a project,” Ms. Mason says.
The new feature will…
April 23, 2012, 4:26 pm
Video: How Small and Large Nonprofits Use Social Media
As social networks grow in popularity, nonprofits of all sizes must figure out how they spend their time using them, which networks to focus on, and what skills to hire for. But big groups and small groups often have different approaches to these challenges.
Large groups typically have more resources and can give more time to social media. For example, TechSoup Global, which has a staff of about 230, dedicates three full-time employees and four part-time contractors to maintaining its presence on social networks. The group soon plans to use fewer contractors while adding a new full-time employee who will handle live online events, says Susan Tenby, TechSoup’s director of online community.
Smaller groups can’t afford such luxuries. The Collaborative for High Performance Schools, which has three full-time employees, must juggle social media with its other priorities. Still, it…
April 19, 2012, 10:39 am
3 Online Traffic Measures All Nonprofits Should Track
A fact sheet featured on Food & Water Watch. The organization tracks what people download to see what draws attention.
Nonprofits can gather expansive amounts of information about their online visitors by using free programs like Google Analytics.
But how much of this information is really important—especially for groups that have limited time to track and analyze data about viewers?
Joanna Miles, online campaign organizer at Food & Water Watch, an advocacy group, says nonprofit leaders should be selective about what they track.
“If we’re never going to use that data, I don’t want to track it,” she says. “Otherwise, it’s just more noise in our content reports.”
For nonprofits that use Google Analytics, Ms. Miles recommends they use a tool called Goals, which can track how many views a…
April 11, 2012, 9:38 am
DoGooder Awards Highlight Effective Nonprofit Videos
Eight charities have won cash grants through the DoGooder Awards, an annual contest that highlights the best nonprofit videos.
The winning videos, which include both advocacy and fundraising features, succinctly communicate a message while including a call to action, says Danny Alpert, a contest judge and executive producer at See3, a video consulting company that sponsors the contest, which is now in its sixth year.
“Nonprofits need to challenge themselves about what makes a story worth telling,” Mr. Alpert says. “Why will people care?”
The contest awarded four $3,500 grants, three based on an organization’s size, plus one more for overall storytelling. The Case Foundation also provided four organizations $2,500 in its “Be Fearless Video” category for producing especially provocative work. YouTube recently featured the winning videos on its homepage.
See two of the winning…
April 5, 2012, 9:08 am
Greenpeace Experiments With Technology Team Structure
Greenpeace has never acted much like other nonprofits. As Michael Silberman, a global director with the environmental protection group, put it in a session at the Nonprofit Technology Conference on Wednesday, “Greenpeace is a big institution but not as staid as other big institutions.”
Mr. Silberman leads an effort at Greenpeace called Mobilization Lab. His small team—three to four full-time staff members by the end of the year, including a data analyst—has two goals: to educate employees on the smartest ways to use multimedia to get supporters involved and to create a culture of experimentation and testing.
That approach to innovation differs from the common practice of hiring a social-media manager or online expert to handle communications on the Internet. The problem with those roles, Jason Mogus, chief executive of the consulting firm Communicopia, told the conference is…
April 4, 2012, 10:41 am
Nonprofits Chalk Up Big Gains in Social-Network Followers
Nonprofits are expanding the number of supporters they draw on Facebook, Twitter, and others social networks, all without spending much more money to attract attention, a new study finds.
The average nonprofit’s Twitter page increased its follower count 81 percent in the past year, from 1,822 to 3,290. Groups also added more Facebook followers by 30 percent, from an average of 6,376 in 2011 to 8,317 in 2012.
This year’s findings, from the fourth annual report by the Nonprofit Technology Network, the fundraising-software company Blackbaud, and the consulting company Common Knowledge, were based on data from 3,522 nonprofits. It was released to coincide with the Nonprofit Technology conference that opened in San Francisco Tuesday.
For the first time, the study attempted to quantify the return on investment per social- media follower.
The study found that the average nonprofit…
March 13, 2012, 10:41 am
Charity Behind Viral Video Failed to Respond to Watchdog Requests
A charity watchdog took the unusual step Monday of calling attention to the unwillingness of the nonprofit behind the popular “Kony 2012″ video to provide basic information needed to certify whether donors should support it.
The BBB Wise Giving Alliance, an accreditation site for nonprofits, has tried for six years to persuade the group, Invisible Children, to undergo a financial and governance review, to no avail.
During those six years, the Wise Giving Alliance says it has sent 18 letters, including a dozen by certified mail.
Invisible Children, which gained its nonprofit status in 2005, has prompted considerable scrutiny of its methods and finances after it made its video, which seeks the removal of an African warlord named Joseph Kony.
The Wise Giving Alliance says Invisible Children’s video sends a mixed message. “We think that an organization that is willing to shine…
March 9, 2012, 10:51 am
What ‘Kony 2012′ Means for Online Advocacy
Since Monday, “Kony 2012,” the 30-minute video released by Invisible Children, a San Diego advocacy group, has garnered more than 50 million views on YouTube, making a household name of Joseph Kony, head of the Lord’s Resistance Army operating in Central Africa.
While the video has enthralled young people on social networks and has been been shared by celebrities, it has also drawn comments and, often, criticism, from opinion makers in the realms of international advocacy and social-media marketing.
Jillian York, director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocate for digital rights and access, says that people can support a cause over social media without stopping to investigate whether an advocacy group has other intentions.
“When you don’t have a lot of objective or investigative reporting, these really slick campaigns become the reporting,” says Ms. York in an…
November 7, 2011, 9:50 pm
Charities Can Now Have Their Own Pages on Google’s New Social Network
Nonprofits are finally getting their opportunity to create a presence on Google’s new social network.
Until Monday, only individuals were allowed to create pages on the Google+ network, which went public this summer with great fanfare. But now nonprofits and businesses will also be able to, according to Google’s official announcement.
Pages for groups will have many of the same features as personal profiles. Users, for instance, can post information, photos, and videos as well as links and background and contact information. Organizations also have the option of hosting video “Hangouts.”
In addition, Google is giving group pages extra weight in Google searches. Web users who type the + prefix before an organization’s name on a Google search are taken straight to a group’s profile page. For example, a user who types “+angry birds” is taken to the …
September 29, 2011, 10:11 am
Two Nonprofits Honored for Innovative Technology
Hollaback created a smartphone app that lets victims of sexual harassment log their experiences and post a picture of the person they say harassed them.
South by Southwest, the annual conference of thinkers and innovators, has honored two nonprofits it says are using technology in novel ways to promote social good.
The organizations, which won scholarships to attend next year’s conference, are Hollaback and Friendfactor. Three other groups that are not nonprofits also won after entering an essay content to describe their work.
Hollaback, in Brooklyn, works to fight sexual harassment by collecting personal stories of victims on its Web site. Victims are encouraged to use their smart phones to post pictures of those who engage in “street” harassment.
To making such reporting easier, Hollaback has …
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