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Author Archives: Derek Lieu
September 23, 2011, 5:55 pm
Facebook Updates Could Give Nonprofits Better Visibility
Facebook released this graphic to show how it is making changes to better highlight information people want others to see.
Facebook is making big changes in how it organizes and displays information about people who create profiles on the site. And nonprofits stand to benefit from the new format.
Until now, Facebook, by far the world’s largest social network, has organized information on a person’s profile pages in reverse chronological order. When a charity supporter posted a status update or a volunteer “liked” a posting or shared content from elsewhere online, that item was displayed at the top of the profiles. As soon as other items went up, though, the charity reference would get lost on the page.
But Facebook this week said it will soon roll out a different format that will…
September 16, 2011, 9:42 am
Aid Group Raises Money With Online-Game Tie-In
Direct Relief International used the Facebook game Mafia Wars to spur supporters to “buy” imaginary items and finance relief work.
This is the ninth in a series of profiles that explore how nonprofits are using social media to raise money and connect with supporters. Check back tomorrow for the next article in the series.
For more on how groups are using social media to raise money, see The Chronicle’s recent special report and visit The Chronicle’s social-media homepage.
Direct Relief International
Twitter handle: @directrelief
What it raised: More than $804,000
The campaign: Zynga, a company that produces Mafia Wars and other games that are popular on Facebook, helped Direct Relief International raise money to aid victims of the March earthquake and tsunami in Japan,…
September 13, 2011, 10:18 am
Nature Conservancy Emphasizes Relationships, Online and Off
This is the sixth in a series of profiles that explore how nonprofits are using social media to raise money and connect with supporters. Check back tomorrow for the next article in the series.
For more on how groups are using social media to raise money, see The Chronicle’s recent special report and visit The Chronicle’s social-media homepage.
The Nature Conservancy encouraged followers to organize local picnics in celebration of Earth Day in April 2011.
Nature Conservancy
Twitter handle: @nature_org
What it raised: Two corporations donated $100,000 each: Back to Nature, a food supplier, underwrote the Picnic for the Planet event while the restaurant chain Chipotle gave to the Conservancy’s sustainable-agriculture efforts as a result of the event.
The campaign: The group encouraged…
September 7, 2011, 10:46 am
How an Online Contest Raised a Charity’s Profile
This is the second in a series of profiles that explore how nonprofits are using social media to raise money and connect with supporters. Check back tomorrow for the next article in the series.
For more on how groups are using social media to raise money, see The Chronicle’s recent special report and visit The Chronicle’s social-media homepage.
Ellen DeGeneres’s support of Trevor Project’s anti-bullying efforts via a text-message drive raised $150,000 for the advocacy group.
The Trevor Project
Twitter handle: @TrevorProject
What it raised: $25,000
The campaign: The Trevor Project, a group that seeks to prevent gay and lesbian youths from commiting suicide, competed for and won a first-round grant of $25,000 in the 2010 Chase Community Giving contest, a Facebook contest sponsored by…
August 25, 2011, 9:22 am
Nonprofits Are Expected to Use Social Media During Disasters
As Hurricane Irene barrels toward America’s East Coast, many people will be turning to Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks to communicate—and they expect nonprofits that provide disaster aid to do the same, according to a new survey by the American Red Cross.
Eighty percent of Americans said they expect national relief groups to monitor their own social-media feeds as well as the Web sites where disaster victims might make urgent requests for help. And they expect those groups to act quickly. About 35 percent of those surveyed said that it is reasonable to expect assistance to arrive within an hour after a request for help is posted online.
The survey relied on data from 1,046 adults who responded to an online poll and 1,011 adults who took a telephone survey.
Despite their high expectations, nearly half of Americans thought it “likely” that their requests on social …
August 11, 2011, 9:38 am
How the Smithsonian Is Helping Wikipedia
Wikipedia has detailed sections describing every episode of the television show Seinfeld, but its coverage of art history is more sparse. Often one person will make a contribution on a single work and then it languishes.
To help Wikipedia’s art-history offerings grow more robust, a group of volunteers recently congregated at the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art, in Washington.
They started by writing a series of articles on artists who participated in a key moment for American art, the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art, often referred to as the Armory show.
With the help of archivists and historians associated with the museum, the volunteer “Wikipedians” brought their laptops and, over the course of an afternoon, created pages and bibliographies for artists such as the sculptor Solon Borglum and the painter Andrew Dasburg.
The “edit-a-thon”…
August 8, 2011, 7:55 pm
Nonprofit Offers Twitter Account to Contest Winner
One of the keys to social-media success is acknowledging that an organization can’t control its message.
Water.org has decided to push that notion to the extreme.
The nonprofit—which was started by the actor Matt Damon to raise money for water sanitation in developing countries—is playing host to an online contest in which it will cede control of its official Twitter account for one week to one of its most ardent supporters.
The contest, which runs through August 31, is open to any person or organization in the United States with a Twitter account. The winner, who will be chosen via a vote by the charity’s followers, will then have the keys to its @water Twitter account—and its more than 430,000 followers.
Mike McCammon, chief community officer at Water.org, says he hopes the winner will be an individual with strong ties to his organization and its cause.
What’s…
July 27, 2011, 10:35 am
Online Competition Provides Free Web Tools to Nonprofit
Stephen Colbert presented the Big Winner trophy to Michael Nutt, who won the DonorsChoose Hacking Education contest with his entry. Photo courtesy of DonorsChoose
DonorsChoose.org, a nonprofit that makes it easy for teachers to create online appeals to raise money for classroom trips and equipment, now has dozens of new tools to help potential donors—and all were developed at no cost.
Among those tools are a map that shows donation “arrows” arriving at their destination over time; an iPhone app that collects and displays local projects in need of support; and a service that suggests projects to recommend to Twitter followers based on their location.
While other organizations, nonprofit or not, would pay considerable fees for these tools, developers and data artists created them free as entries in…
June 2, 2011, 10:42 am
Hispanics and Blacks More Likely Than Whites to Support Causes Online
Ethnicity plays a role in how people perceive charitable and political causes they encounter on social networks and whether they go on to get involved with those causes, a new survey finds.
Out of 2,000 participants in the survey, 30 percent of black adults and 39 percent of Hispanics said they were more likely to support online causes rather than causes they encountered offline; 24 percent of whites said the same.
The study was released by Georgetown University’s Center for Social Impact Communication and Ogilvy PR, a public-relations company. (The same group released another survey last month showing differences between men and women who support causes promoted on social networks.)
Some causes attract blacks and Hispanics more than whites, the study found. Among them: Forty-six percent of blacks were involved in efforts to feed the hungry, compared with 38 percent of whites…
May 20, 2011, 10:41 am
Alaska Foundation Preserves Art in Virtual World
Rasmuson Foundation's Gallery for Alaskan Artists in the game Second Life
The Rasmuson Foundation, an Anchorage fund that awards grants to Alaska artists, understands that art is not among the state’s well-known exports.
So when the foundation began to experiment with ways to promote that art outside of state lines, it turned to the virtual world of Second Life, where the results can be seen by all. A floating digital museum now displays works by the artists the fund has supported.
For Rasmuson, Second Life was the right tool for the time.
“There’s an incredibly strong arts community [in Second Life],” says Aliza Sherman a digital strategy consultant to Rasmuson. “It was the first foray into an online presence for a lot of artists.”
Now the foundation, which has awarded 230 grants to…
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