Urge Alerts

The British consumer research firm, trendwatching.com, issued a new report the other day to signal some recent shifts in consumer behavior, based on the observations of its hundreds of professional trend-spotters planted around the globe. Here are four "trends-to-watch" that are especially relevant to the use of social media and the cause-wired among us:

1. Urge alerts. Spurred by the Web and mobile phones, increasing numbers of people want their buying experiences to be based more on speed and location -- their location. Sure, it's not new that people want things “right now.” But the "where" is becoming increasingly important. So how can a company or a nonprofit satisfy these new expectations from the people who support them? According to trendwatching.com, it's all about getting better at keeping up with the accelerating pace of cultural change. For nonprofits, maybe it's as simple as creating a Web interface set up to track the progress of a donation. Consider Domino’s Pizza and its new digital “pizza tracer.” It allows customers to follow the progress of their order, from preparation to delivery, making delivery delays easier to bear and giving consumers a virtual peek into Domino's kitchen. Is there a digital way to help donors trace the flow of their donations or measure their impact? “While the appeal and influence of ‘now’ has been building for years, societal attitudes, sky-high consumer expectations and new technologies are currently converging in such a powerful way that brands truly have no choice but to go ‘real-time’,” the report says. The takeaway here for social change groups? Find a way to help your donors help you to measure the impact they're having, or risk losing them to groups that will.

2. Brand butlers: You’ve heard it before: serving is the new selling. But now, a nonprofit or a for-profit will need to start asking its customers or donors what it can do to help them -- rather than the other way around. Trendwatching.com says groups that reinvent themselves into “service organizations” (a shift from “broadcasting” to "assisting") could be more likely to survive in the months and years ahead. At least one nonprofit -- the Brooklyn Museum -- is already working the new angles. CTO Shelley Bernstein has developed a way for visitors to “check in” at their favorite exhibits, using their mobile phones. Once they check in this way, a museum staff member comes out to greet them in person -- and to assist them, if necessary, in their search for what interests them. Bernstein also is developing a way to help museum-goers to navigate the neighborhood outside the museum. Museum staff issues an ever-changing list of "staff picks" that might include tips on where to find the best piece of apple pie or bottle of wine in the area.

3. Mature-ialism. Consumers increasingly want authentic offline experiences. But now, "authentic" is being measured by the level of drama involved. "Consumers have a hunger to be exposed to raw and real life – in the form of much more honest conversations, more daring innovations, and more offline, risqué experiences," Trendwatching.com says. "They want brands that push the boundaries." Driving this? The spread of a more liberal, “anything goes” culture in the online world -- coupled with an ongoing shift in what constitutes "status" in today’s society, the firm says. “There has never been a bigger market for demanding and difficult experiences; people are upgrading their consumption to challenge themselves," the report says. "They’re craving authenticity and brands that, increasingly, have values that reflect their own.” For nonprofits, this means there may be an even bigger pool of potential donors waiting to “get their hands dirty” or wanting to have an offline experience that demands more of them to serve the needy -- a kind of reverse-Slacktivism. But consumers also still want to have fun, the company says. Why else are more charities staging contests asking people to, say, shave their beards for a cause, or lose 10 pounds so that poor kids can eat? [Think The Biggest Loser meets the local food bank.]

4. Mass mingling. Surging use of mobile 'smart phones' and the use of location-awareness games like Foursquare and Gowalla are creating ever-larger mobile social networks that convene around social events or a local business "happening." Next up? People organizing in this way around causes. "Like any consumer trend, mass mingling unlocks a human need in a new way," the report says. "It makes the act of interacting with others much easier." Consider organizing your nonprofit supporters around a volunteer event -- but do it via Foursquare or Facebook or Gowalla. And hold that event right away -- this afternoon. Be bold. Remember, one of the latest consumer trends is a respect for brands that dare to do new things -- right now.

Got any other examples of new consumer trends with special promise for the advocacy sector? Let us hear from you!

-- Marcia Stepanek

(Illustration, Flying Team, by Miroslaw Pieprzyk)

Ground Crew

GPS is not just about maps and driving directions anymore. As smart phones get even smarter, people like Joe Edelman are creating new ways to use location-awareness apps to enable people to connect and interact with the world from their pockets in ways previously unimaginable.

For his part, Edelman is developing something called Ground Crew—which he hopes will help to make community organizing easier, if not more immediate. Think crowdsourcing—but on-demand. Need a bunch of volunteers within the next hour to help your nonprofit distribute fliers around the neighborhood? "Get your squad on," says Edelman. Using your mobile phone, Ground Crew can link you to a real-time "squad" of people who can drum up volunteer coordinators and community organizers in a heartbeat. It uses text messaging and GPS to help you see who in your network is available at any given time, whether for 20 minutes or an entire morning.

Edelman, a former community organizer, is especially excited by the potential of his app to crowd-source large demonstrations, like flash causes. "We need to reorganize the world," says Edelman, who got inspired through his previous work with Charlie Todd's Improv Everywhere group, famous for its art-and-performance flash mobs, including Frozen Grand Central in 2008. "We're not doing things right as communities. We're not meeting our neighbors. We're using too much energy to get things done."

Check out some of the other promising new location-awareness apps in Wired; mobileactive.org also is tracking them closely.

(Illustration, Beyond Cell Phone, by Antonis Papantoniou for istock.com)

Dollar Days

A panel I moderated today at the Harvard Business School Club of New York underscored what cash-crunched nonprofits are just beginning to figure out: “crowdsourcing”—using the Web and online social media to better engage supporters and woo new ones—will become ever-more critical to surviving the unfolding economic slowdown. My panelists at the Club's first-ever social enterprise summit—Vinay Bhagat, Greg McHale, Katrin Verclas, and Shelley Bernstein—agreed that the rise of social media, from mobile phones to online social networks to digital video-sharing, is forcing many charities to expand and rapidly accelerate their use of the Web to drum up new converts, new dollars, and ideas. I call it the Engagement Imperative; panelists agreed the description is spot-on. “Nonprofits need to engage people they haven't reached before,” said Bhagat, the founder and chief strategist of Convio. "They need to reinvent the way they build support.”

Given the week's financial meltdown on Wall Street, all four panelists acknowledged new levels of skittishness among advocacy groups heading into their annual giving season. Many attendees predicted the worst giving season since 9/11. "If you doubted it before," Bhagat said, "engaging supporters (using social media) is now mandatory." Added McHale, founder of Good2Gether, a Boston-based Web service that helps nonprofits promote their work by placing widgets next to online news stories relevant to their cause: "The word out there (among nonprofits) is terror." Organizations that have not previously taken big strides with technology, he said, are being forced now to play catch-up—fast—and not all groups will make it. "This economy is really focusing people on finding new ways to get to more people, faster," he said.

But Bernstein, manager of information systems for the Brooklyn Museum, cautioned that marketing shouldn't be the sole focus of the Web's new social engagement tools. "It’s really important that people participate in a cause, and feel like they've had some input," she said. "That must come first...If people feel personally engaged and part of (your cause), they will contribute. But first and foremost, this is about engagement, not marketing. It's a critical distinction to understand. If you're not personally more engaged with your supporters using these tools in authentic, sustainable ways, they'll go somewhere else."

To be sure, the rise of social media will trigger structural changes at many nonprofit organizations, panelists agreed. "Organizations as we knew them are dead," said Verclas, co-founder of MobileActive.org, when asked to come up with a quick phrase summarizing the impact of this so-called Web 2.0 on philanthropy. Elaborating, Verclas said social media are so powerfully reshaping the way people organize themselves into groups for change, that not only do nonprofits need to manage donors differently—they also must rethink the way they manage themselves.

For more on the push by some nonprofits to use crowdsourcing and other forms of social engagement to boost support in this flagging economy, see my story on MSNBC.com, the first in a series I'm producing to explore the rise of social media and their influence on the nonprofit sector during the current economic downturn.

One final note: Worries about the future of philanthropy similarly dominated the conversation at a private book party hosted tonight by Economist North America Publisher Paul Rossi to celebrate the September 30 release of U.S. Editor Matthew Bishop's new book about America's new class of philanthropic billionaires, Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World. Co-authored by Michael Green, the book describes how these wealth titans are reshaping philanthropy, using big-business-style strategies and expecting results and accountability to match. Do these new giving powerhouses like Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, George Soros and others have too much power? Who holds them accountable, Bishop and Green ask—and, perhaps most urgently, will these leaders continue to give generously through the financial sector's meltdown?

Bishop, for his part, told guests assembled at The Campbell Apartment in Grand Central Station that the new climate on Wall Street will put the much-professed commitment of these new philanthrocapitalists to its first real test. "We'll know soon enough if this was just a hobby born of a company's or an individual's desire to burnish an image or whether today's activism represents the deep commitment to change that has been expressed these past years," Bishop said. Either way, Bishop added, "the rich will probably get richer, regardless"—and philanthropy, ever-more critical. Said Green: "The huge cost of bailing out the financial system will mean that the government will have far less to spend on everything else."

As if to emphasize that point, next door to the Harvard Club—where Bishop and I addressed side-by-side panels earlier in the day—someone put a sign made out of masking tape on the cornerstone of the old New York Trust building. Just beneath the chiseled granite that heralded the bank's founding in the late 1800s, the sign added the postscript: "Floundered, 2008."

(Illustration by Brian Stauffer for the ispot.com)