After Slacktivism

Who says social advocates can't raise big money and forge lasting donor relationships online for their causes? Today's South by Southwest (SxSW) panel on slacktivism -- more elegantly and formally called Debunking the Myth of Social Media Fundraising -- offered a rousing antidote to the notion of ineffectual, click-and-give philanthropy. Urban Dictionary defines slacktivism -- a portmanteau of the words "slacker" and "activism" -- as "a way of pretending to care while sitting ... in front of a computer playing WoW." Such detachment, the panelists asserted, is becoming less of a factor in today's cause-wired, text-aided giving arena: the outpouring of mobile contributions to victims of Haiti's January 12 earthquake and donor retention strategies being crafted to hang on to many of those donors over time should be proof positive that online giving has, at last, begun to evolve and inform even the most traditional philanthropy circles.

[Evgeny Morozov, one of the critics of slacktivism, wrote in a Foreign Policy Magazine article last fall entitled "From Slacktivism to Activism" that he is skeptical of numerous digital activism campaigns "that attempt to change the world through Facebook and Twitter." He said the desire to instantly connect with others online around ever-new causes poses a threat to more productive uses of time, such as brainstorming solutions to the world's ongoing problems.]

Combining research data with personal anecdotes, panelists Stacey Monk (Epic Change); Brooke McMillan (the Lance Armstrong Foundation); Donna Wilkins (Charity Dynamics), and Frank Barry (with Blackbaud, the fundraising software firm) made a strong case for the potential of social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to raise money and awareness -- not simply as tools in one-off fundraising campaigns but also in efforts to build richer and more sustainable donor relationships across the socioeconomic spectrum.

There are dozens of commonly-held misperceptions about the use of social media in advocacy, the panelists said, and here are five of them:

Myth One: Social Media Aren't Very Effective. Not true, said the panelists. Social media can be effective in breaking down geographic boundaries, building communities of donors who otherwise would not be able to connect, and bringing in contributions from many more people than before. Monk says her nonprofit has raised nearly all of its money via Twitter, to build classrooms in Tanzania, buy school supplies for the students there and provide skills training inside and outside the classroom -- including social media skills aimed at helping them to learn more about other people from around the world. While the panelists agreed that using social media to fund-raise can take time, as it's all about relationship-building and not simply a matter of learning the technology.

Myth Two: Major Donors Do Not Exist in Social Media. Not true, said McMillan, and cited the example of @fatcyclist, the Twitter handle for a man who blogged and Tweeted to raise some $800,000 over the course of a year for Livestrong, Lance Armstrong's cancer research foundation. With social media, Barry said, "major donors" are no longer just wealthy individuals. Now they include individuals of all income levels adept at using their social influence online and off to engage others around giving to a cause.

Myth Three: No one Raises Money on Twitter. Guess again, said the panelists. For one, look at Twestival, the regional, national, and global fund-raising campaigns staged on Twitter to benefit a variety of causes. Then look at TweetsGiving. Both micro-blogging fundraisers have increased donations year over year, suggesting such campaigns are sustainable. To be sure, Monk said, "when you first get on Twitter you don't know what you're doing there." But soon, she added, you discover that "Twitter engineers serendipity" -- all sorts of connections that can be leveraged to raise money and awareness over time.

Myth Four: Building Community Does Not Help You Raise Money. Also not true, the panelists said. Social media campaigns allow nonprofits to reach new donors and build the relationships required to raise funds from previously untapped sources. Nonprofits, said Monk, "shoot themselves in the foot" when they put a "give" button on their Web sites. Causes need, instead, to humanize fund-raising by using social media to engage donors in the cause. "Authentic connections between humans create movements, and movements raise funds," Monk said. "...Social media should humanize the process of giving, not automate it." Storytelling, the act of humanizing your cause to engage donors, is critical, she added. "If the word 'donate' is in your Tweet, you're doing it wrong," said Monk. To emphasize the point, Monk says she writes the Twitter handles of donors on the walls of the classrooms they're helping her to build as a way of showing them both her gratitude and their impact, and it works.

Myth Five: Social Media Cannibalize Other Fundraising Channels. Au contraire, said Monk. "Social media are just additional tools. Donors want to be able to choose" the way they give money to a cause, she said, and sites like Facebook and Twitter give them the option to give in new ways. Besides, the panelists agreed, social media offer an effective way for causes to reach the hearts and pocketbooks of Baby Boomers, the largest-growing demographic using Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites. Both Wilkins and Barry said multi-channel fund-raising strategies proved most effective, citing a recent Blackbaud/Charity Dynamics study. One finding: organizations that use email effectively to fund-raise also tend to use social media more effectively, as well. "My job didn't exist a year ago," said McMillan, the social media evangelist at Livestrong.

For more on the subject, check out the study on social media in fund-raising released last month by Charity Dynamics and Blackbaud.

Still not convinced? Come to the NTEN annual conference in Atlanta in April to hear some opposing views on the subject and a debate over the challenges to online giving that exist. My panel on Slacktivism will feature Nancy Lublin, CEO of dosomething.org; Jacob Colker, Cofounder of The Extraordinaries; Wendy Harman, social media director of the American Red Cross, and Aaron Smith, of Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, which is conducting ground-breaking research on the use of social media by Generation Y. Hope to see you there!

--By Marcia Stepanek

(Illustration by Jumpingsack for istock.com)

The Year Ahead

It's New Year's Day and time to forecast which trends are most likely to shape the cause-wired landscape this year. More than ever, it seems, online activists are divided over how they think the Web will empower them in new ways to make change in the world.

To be sure, 2010 will be another tough year economically for many start-ups and social advocacy groups. At the very least, proving social impact will matter more than ever. But these same rising pressures to make measureable change also will lead to innovative new forms of online collaboration and consolidation. Low-cost social media will be used ever-more widely and creatively by social enterprises and advocacy groups to aggregate new levels of clout, funding, innovation and community support.

In short? Collaboration and consolidation are this year's mega-trends. Here are some of the ways these trends will show up in the weeks and months ahead. (And this list is just for starters. Have your say at the end of this post.)

* Divisions between traditional "giving" sectors will continue to fade. More organizations, companies and consumers will seek to achieve a branded, demonstrable impact on social problem-solving with the dollars, time and ideas they spend or contribute. Look for social entrepreneurs to collaborate on new ways to prove, measure, and scale their social impact across time, place, sectors and ideologies. The recent launch of the Global Impact Investing Network, for example, will push the cuase of social investing by bringing together global philanthropists, ethical banks and social entrepreneurs and enterprises to apply the microfinance model to health care an other services needed by those living in poverty around the world. Look, too, for more offline conferences that celebrate collaboration among activists across sectors for social change. Example: The two-year-old CUSP conference in Chicago, which features social innovators who are reshaping society by design, regardless of whether they are from the corporate, education, religious, nonprofit, entertainment, or technology sectors. Look for more such efforts to scale cross-sector social innovation for greater impact.

* New ways to measure impact will emerge. Mobile and location-awareness technology -- because it will enable people to get closer to measuring their personal impact on the world in real-time -- will continue to radicalize the social enterprise space and the giving experience (watch for Foursquare, Google Latitude, Loopt, FireEagle and other such geo-location "games" to become more socially conscious this year), reshaping how and what people donate. Giving money will become less important than giving voice, giving time, giving influence, and giving work. Look for social networks to create new ways to reward those who demonstrate the most activity around socially-conscious activities.

* Micro-activism will proliferate. Expect to see new start-ups modeled after The Extraordinaries, an online micro-volunteering enterprise that enables people to give short bits of their time via their mobile phones from anywhere at any time. Also look for more micro-gift enterprises to emerge, such as Dreambank.org, which allows causes or individuals in need to receive a portion of what they need or want from many people rather than get gifts or input they can't use (such as wool blankets for weather-disaster victims in tropical climates). Additionally, look for more micro-funding groups like World Nomads, which through its Footprints program funds large-scale international development projects through micro-donations. Expect, too, the rise of micro-seed funding and 1-to-1 financing of social entrepreneurs. Additionally, get ready to see new types of micro-work enterprises to stem from SamaSource, which uses the Web to outsource digital work for larger companies to educated people living in poverty in developing nations. The micro-craze will also lead to more innovative uses of social media platforms like Twitter and Ning by social enterprises to crowdsource micro-services and influence that scales.

* More small causes will be aggregated to achieve greater impact. Consider the innovative umbrella group, Wildlife Direct, a Kenya-based nonprofit enterprise that aggregates autonomous wildlife conservation activists under a single umbrella and gives each exposure to individual donors. Says Paula Kahumbu, a 2009 PopTech fellow and Wildlife Direct's executive director: "Underfunding is conservation's biggest threat. By giving each of the wildlife activists a blog, we enable individual donors from around the world to communicate directly with the people they are funding." [Think donorschoose.org meets The Huffington Post meets wildlife conservation.] The goal, says Kahumbu, is to create a single platform for the many smaller groups working to save wildlife in Africa. "We have much to share with each other -- each activist or group of activists is working on a different animal or aspect of the problem. We are stronger working together than we are alone." Additionally, the newly-launched Social Entrepreneur open API, which is a search engine for finding social entrepreneurs, is an effort to provide an exchange and transfer of information so as to avoid duplication in the "do-good" sector. One site to keep watching in 2010 is SocialActions.com, as well as the Compathos Foundation, which connects volunteers and financial resources with nonprofits through digital storytelling.

* Co-working goes mainstream. Until recently, co-working spaces -- which Wikipedia defines as "the social gathering of a group of people, who are still working independently, but who share values and who are interested in the synergy that can happen from working with talented people in the same space" -- were concentrated most heavily in San Francisco and New York. In the past, co-working has mostly been a way for newbie start-up founders to share space and expenses. 2010 will likely see the expansion and formalization of these types of spaces both geographically and intellectually, as more will become incubators for start-up funding and volunteer support. Example: The Unreasonable Institute, a new nonprofit, has announced it will bring 25 global social entrepreneurs to Boulder, Colo., this summer for 10 weeks to co-train, co-work, and explore seed funding collaborations. Look for more such social enterprise colonies and retreats to pop up this year, based on the 20th century model of artist's colonies and writer's workshops.

* Online swarms gain clout. The combination of mobile phone, geo-location, and real-time organizing technologies and platforms will embolden "flash cause and consumer mobs" to exert their influence in new and expanded ways. Globally, mobile data traffic is set to double every year through 2013, increasing 66-fold between 2008 and 2013. Look for more nonprofits to "hire" members of online social networks who have the most online and mobile followers to help them raise funds and awareness on-demand; look for a continued rise in new consumer-complaint platforms such as Quiet Riots, a UK start-up that offers disgruntled consumers a way to crowdsource their complaints and give companies a way to address them. Look, too, for more companies and nonprofits to be held more publicly accountable for their actions. Case in point: JPMorgan Chase's recent online contest snafu.

What are some of your predictions for the year ahead? Go ahead, it's your turn. Tell us what you think -- and what we missed.

- By Marcia Stepanek

(This post first appeared on Justmeans and is being reposted here with permission)