See What’s Out There

One of the problems with YouTube is that while you can see how many views a video got, you don’t know much more about where or how that video was viewed.

YouTube took a baby-step in the right direction with the release of YouTube Insight. From the YouTube blog:

“Today we’re releasing YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. For example, uploaders can see how often their videos are viewed in different geographic regions, as well as how popular they are relative to all videos in that market over a given period of time. You can also delve deeper into the lifecycle of your videos, like how long it takes for a video to become popular, and what happens to video views as popularity peaks.”

From the looks of it, we still don’t know how many people saw the frame vs. pressed play, how many people played through only parts of the video, etc. But it’s a start. (For some reason they did not link to the tool in the announcement.)

The New York Times Magazine on Sunday was all about philanthropy.

Here’s what you need to read:

What Makes People Give?

This article is really about how some social scientists, economist types are looking at why people give. It turns out that much of what fundraisers think they know is right, but there is a lot of subtlety. The main example in the article is about matching programs. The research suggests matches lead to more giving, but the type of match — whether 1x or 2x or 3x the gift — had no impact at all. The article looks at the psychology of giving.

Some highlights:

For a long time, philanthropy was mostly ignored by social scientists. It’s not an especially large part of the economy, and most charities operate on a shoestring, without the resources to finance research projects. But this is starting to change. Americans gave $295 billion to charity in 2006, equal to 2.2 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, up from about 1.8 percent from the mid-’70s to the mid-’90s, according to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. Most philanthropy still comes in the form of small gifts, but there is also a growing group of donors, like Bill and Melinda Gates, who are interested in bringing some of the quantitative rigor of big business to philanthropy.

Academics, for their part, have come to realize that charities provide an excellent laboratory for studying human behavior, in part because so many of them are desperate for the kind of free-of-charge consulting Karlan was offering. When charities are designing their donor appeals, they often go by nothing more than a few rules of thumb, some of which may be profoundly insightful and others a good deal less so. “I think some fund-raisers have developed terrific intuitions, passed on through the fraternity of fund-raisers,” says Paul Brest, president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park, Calif., which often works with charities. “But a lot of the intuitions don’t work. Look at how much junk mail you get.” Matching gifts were another good example. People figured that they worked, because — well, how could they not? They seem so sensible. …

…Last year, Princeton University held a conference at which List, Croson, Andreoni and others who study charitable giving got together with fund-raisers from Africare, the National MS Society and elsewhere. I spoke with three people who listened to the academics present their work, and all said they found it invigorating. “We all have different strategies and takes on how to reach out to potential donors,” said Nicole Eley of Africare, which sends development and relief aid to Africa. “Many of them work, some don’t — it’s a trial-and-error process.” It’s easy to imagine that the academic research may eventually serve as the building blocks for a unified theory of how to raise money.

The Celebrity Solution

This article is about celebrity involvement in philanthropy and specifically looks at Natalie Portman, someone who has become the spokesperson for the growing field of micro-lending.

Some highlights:

In 2004, Natalie Portman, then a 22-year-old fresh from college, went to Capitol Hill to talk to Congress on behalf of the Foundation for International Community Assistance, or Finca, a microfinance organization for which she served as “ambassador.” She found herself wondering what she was doing there, but her colleagues assured her: “We got the meetings because of you.” For lawmakers, Natalie Portman was not simply a young woman — she was the beautiful Padmé from “Star Wars.” “And I was like, ‘That seems totally nuts to me,’ ” Portman told me recently. It’s the way it works, I guess. I’m not particularly proud that in our country I can get a meeting with a representative more easily than the head of a nonprofit can.”

Well, who is? But it is the way it works. Stars — movie stars, rock stars, sports stars — exercise a ludicrous influence over the public consciousness. Many are happy to exploit that power; others are wrecked by it. In recent years, stars have learned that their intense presentness in people’s daily lives and their access to the uppermost realms of politics, business and the media offer them a peculiar kind of moral position, should they care to use it. And many of those with the most leverage — Bono and Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt and George Clooney and, yes, Natalie Portman — have increasingly chosen to mount that pedestal. Hollywood celebrities have become central players on deeply political issues like development aid, refugees and government-sponsored violence in Darfur.

For Good, Measure

This article is about how foundations have found Jesus in metrics.

Some highlights:

The question that troubles many of the newest philanthropists, though, is whether their bequests will have a notable impact. Much of their money either goes into or comes out of private foundations, those largely opaque institutions with huge endowments that, in the jargon-rich environment of philanthropy, differ from charities like the Red Cross in their tendency to engage in long-term “strategic grant-making.” Such foundations do not exist to give emergency aid during crises arising from war or natural disaster; instead, their purpose is to attack social and scientific problems at the root, a process that sometimes requires substantial allocations of grant money over 5, 10 or even 20 years. That’s a long time to wait before you know whether your money is doing any good. As Judith Rodin, the head of the Rockefeller Foundation since 2005, puts it: “Critics have talked about the field of philanthropy and said: ‘Has it really made a difference. And how would you know?’ ” To Rodin, these are perfectly legitimate questions, even when they’re posed indiscreetly by business titans who only recently entered the genteel world of charity. “If we really want to do work that makes a difference, work that has some effect, then we have to know whether it is working,” she told me recently. “And if you really do it well, you don’t only want to know what works; you want to know how it works.”

Faces of Social Entrepreneurship

You can learn about and see some social entrepreneurs.

Michael Gainer started Buffalo ReUse to creatively salvage materials from the 10,000 abandoned houses the city is demolishing over the next 10 years.

Other Articles worth reading include:

Self-Made Philanthropists

This is a profile of Herb and Marion Sandler

How Many Billionaires Does It Take To Fix A School System?

“Last month, The New York Times Magazine invited five interested parties to lunch to discuss the new world of educational philanthropy. What follows is an edited transcript of the conversation.”

What the Orthodox Jewish sect can teach us about how to use Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and the emerging social web.

It would seem that the ultra-orthodox Chabad Lubavitch have little in common with your nonprofit. Whether you are a direct service provider, an international relief agency, an advocacy group or a trade association, you probably couldn’t imagine what a bunch of black-suited, black-hatted ultra-religious Jews could teach you about outreach, marketing and fundraising. And it seems far fetched to imagine that they have something to say about social networking and internet strategy, in all of its universalistic narcissistic decadence.

But alas, they have a lot to teach us.

I don’t know what you know, if anything, about the Chabad-Lubavitch, so first, a little background. Here I am going to quote extensively from the Wikipedia article on Lubavitch.

Chabad-Lubavitch (also known as Chabad, Habad or Lubavitch), is one of the largest branches of Hasidic Judaism and one of the largest Jewish movements worldwide, especially in the United States, the Former Soviet Union, Europe and Israel. Chabad (חב”ד ) is a Hebrew acronym for “חכמה Chochmah, בינה Binah, דעת Da’at” (”Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge“). Lubavitch, taken from the Russian Любавичи, Lyubavichi, is the name of the town that served as the movement’s headquarters for over a century. In 1993 there were over 200,000 adherents to the movement some estimate today that there are over a million.

OK, so we have this Jewish sect with maybe a million members. If you live in New York, or a college town, you have probably seen some Chabaniks around town. They look like this.

(photo by Mordechai Der Yid)

Chabad, unlike other ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects, don’t keep to themselves. They have it in their DNA to go out into the world and, with incredible passion, reach out to every Jew they can.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson spurred on the movement to what has become known as shlichus (”being emissaries [performing outreach]”) after becoming Rebbe in 1950-1951. As a result, Chabad shluchim (”emissaries”, sing. shliach) have moved all over the world with the stated mission of helping all Jews, regardless of denomination or affiliation. They assist Jews with all their religious needs, as well as with physical assistance and spiritual guidance and teaching. The ultimate goal is to encourage Jews to learn more about their Jewish heritage and to practice Judaism.

The movement, motivated by Rabbi Schneerson, trained and ordained thousands of rabbis, educators, ritual slaughterers, and ritual circumcisers, who are then accompanied by their spouses to many locations around the world. Typically a young Lubavitch rabbi and his wife, in their early twenties, with one or two children, will move to a new location, and as they settle in will raise a large family who as a family unit, will aim to fulfill their mandate of bringing Jewish people closer to Orthodox Judaism and encouraging gentiles to adhere to the Seven Laws of Noah. They will carefully seek out and search for and recruit Jews they have identified and contact them and start the process of encouraging them to observe Judaism, encourage Jews to strengthen their commitment to Judaism. All over the world Lubavitchers (including those not formally in the position of emissaries) assist and support the religious needs of tens of thousands of Jews.

Chabad Houses

Chabad today has centers around the world. Centers are called a Chabad Houses. They are Jewish community centers providing educational and outreach activities for the Jewish community. Level of observance is irrelevant; no minimal level of observance is a requirement for using facilities. The centers are informal in setup. They primarily serve both educational and observance purposes. Effort is made to provide an atmosphere in which the nonobservant will not feel intimidated by any perceived contrast between their lack of knowledge of Jewish practice and the advanced knowledge of some of the people they meet there.

Mitzvah campaigns

Chabad aims to attract non-Orthodox Jews to become Orthodox, and believes this is part of the process of bringing the Messiah. This practice is called “mivtzoim” - meaning “campaigns” or “endeavors.” At one time, Schneerson issued a call to every Jew: “Even if you are not fully committed to a Torah life, do something. Begin with a mitzvah - any mitzvah - its value will not be diminished by the fact that there are others which you are not prepared to do”. Schneerson also suggested ten specific mitzvot that he believed were ideally suited for the emissaries to introduce to non-observant Jews. These were: lighting candles before Shabbat and the Jewish holidays by Jewish women; putting on tefillin; affixing a mezuzah; regular Torah study; giving charity; purchasing Jewish books; keeping kosher; kindness to others; Jewish education, and keeping the family purity laws.

Camps

Chabad has set up an extensive network of camps around the world, most using the name Gan Israel, a name chosen by Rabbi Schneerson for the first overnight camp. There are 1,200 sites serving 210,000 children—most of whom do not come from Orthodox homes. Of these, 500 camps are in the United States.

Campus

In recent years Chabad has greatly expanded its reach on university and college campuses. Chabad Student Centers are active on over 100 campuses, and Chabad offers varied activities at an additional 150 universities worldwide. Professor Alan Dershowitz has said that “Chabad’s presence on college campuses today is absolutely crucial”, and “We cannot rest until Chabad is on every major college campus in the world”.

So what we have here is a group that is mission driven. They have created a vast network of people able to carry their message out to the world. And they are investing in young kids and college kids.

I must mention that the Chabad are not without controversy. Rav Eliezer Shach, who was the patriarch of some of the largest ultra-orthodox communities around the world acerbically called Chabad the “sect closest to Judaism” because of the movement within Chabad to proclaim their late Rabbi Schnerson the messiah.

In addition Chabad has been active in the right-wing of Israeli politics, while at the same time taking a non-Zionist stance (meaning the modern State of Israel is not a theologically consistent phenomenon and that “the only thing that unites Jews is the Torah, not a secular state that happens to be planted on holy land.”

And while I have a serious problem with both of those issues, there is no arguing with their success in building communities of active supporters all over the world. There is no arguing with their success in getting secular Jews to take on some aspects of Jewish observance (a high priority among those who believe intermarriage and assimilation are the biggest threats to Jewish continuity). There is no arguing with their success in getting high-net-worth individuals to part with their money. And there is no arguing with their success in getting people who don’t even believe in their world view to support them every year with donations large and small.

And don’t think that they have this massive centralized fundraising machine that makes it all happen. More from Wikipedia:

Fundraising

Funds for activities of a Chabad center rely entirely on the local community. Chabad centers do not receive funding from Lubavitch headquarters. For the day to day operations, local emissaries do all the fundraising by themselves. The monies fundraised in the local community is invested in that local community. The emissary takes a minimum salary and seldom goes on vacation. Sue Fishcoff writes, “Emissaries in the field may sink millions of dollars into their center, synagogues and Mikvahs, but their own homes are modest, again patterned after their Rebbe’s lack of personal ostentation.”

So how have they done it? How have they been able to get people who will never adopt their lifestyle or world view to support them financially? How are they able to send ultra-Orthodox rabbis to places like Boise, Idaho and expect – know – that they will make it somehow? How are they able to bring non-religious Jews into their synagogues and to their events when their world view and lifestyle is so foreign? And finally, what can their success teach us about fundraising generally and online social networks specifically?

A Theory of Acceptance – Or At Least Tolerance

If I went into a typical Orthodox synagogue in a t-shirt and jeans during the Sabbath service, I would likely have someone ask me to leave. They would tell me that, while they mean no offense, that my clothes are not appropriate for the day or the place and that I am welcome to return in more appropriate attire. If I walk in to a Chabad synagogue on the Sabbath in a t-shirt and jeans I am likely to be given an Aliah – a special honor when you are called to participate in the Torah service. From the Chabad perspective, the one who doesn’t know enough to wear the right clothes is just the person who needs to be brought in and cultivated, not turned away.

Another example. Most Orthodox synagogues close off their parking lots on the Sabbath. Why? You are not allowed to drive on the Sabbath according to Orthodox rules, so having the parking lot open is an tacit invitation to drive, an invitation to break the Sabbath. Makes sense, no? While the Lubavitch take their Sabbath observance very seriously, their parking lots are open and they won’t tell you not to drive. If you drive, drive. Just come.

When Conservative or Orthodox synagogues have group Friday night meals (the beginning of the Sabbath), the evening will include rubber chicken that you most likely had to pay $35 (in advance) to get in the first place. In a Chabad House, you will often get a more elaborate and home-cooked meal (usually prepared by the Rabbi’s wife) and a side order of rousing singing and flowing alcohol. It’s a lot of fun. In fact, the feelings of camaraderie are infectious. No one will ever be made to feel that they are bad or wrong for not taking the Lubavitch path. And no one will ever be asked to pay!

In these three examples we get the core of Lubavitch success that I will try to distill into a few principles:

· Show acceptance and understanding for where people come from
· Never make people feel bad about what they don’t know
· Make them feel welcome in your space
· Teach them by first by example and only explicitly when they ask
· Give them small, non-threatening steps to advance their connection

The most secular person in the world can have a terrific time at a Lubavitch event or even attend their services on a regular basis. They can enjoy speaking to a rabbi whose life is light-years removed from the secular world. And they routinely go out and tell anyone who will listen about the amazing soul that accepts the visitor and gives of themselves without asking for anything in return. That’s magic. Imagine people talking about your organization like that!

Taking the Lessons to Our Fundraising

The lesson I take away from their success for organizational fundraising is that guilt is a losing long-term strategy. Yes, it can work in the short-term. But instead of making me feel bad about what I haven’t done or what I need to do, make me feel good about what you are doing. Inspire me with your dedication. Allow me to participate in a small way, but don’t treat me like a small person for it. Cultivate those who take the first step as if they can become the biggest donor you have and make them feel important for whatever it is they have chosen to do.

The number of organizations that use guilt is staggering. It’s an easy strategy to implement and we see it a lot in direct mail. I recently received a mailing with a nickel in it. “Don’t let this nickel go to waste” they begged me. The same is true with mailing labels. Here are these things with your name on it and you will surely feel guilty is you use them and don’t pay us. This is not how you create deep connections and long-term supporters. (Here is an article in Fundraising Success Magazine that looked at and ranked emotional motivators for fundraising. Guilt was near the end of the list.)

Another lesson that organizations can take from the Lubavitch is in having people on board who are passionate about what they do. Now I don’t expect that most organizations can get to the level of passion of the Lubavitch. These folks believe that their lives, all of our lives, and the future of the universe is at stake. That’s strong motivation and most people who work at your nonprofit won’t come with that level of dedication. But if you are choosing between two employees and one is deeply passionate about your mission and the other one, though more qualified, is seeing it as just another job, pick for passion. (You can see this dedication at work in many organizations. I am seeing it more and more with environmental group staff who are genuinely scared for our collective future and energized by the change that is possible. You can see this dedication in the staff of the New Israel Fund — those in Israel in particular — where I was once a fundraiser. The Israel staff wants desperately to live in a democratic Israel and so they live the change they want to see every day.)

Lessons for Social Networks

The reason I wrote this post was because of a eureka moment I had in connecting the Lubavitch success with social networking. I had this moment last week when I was in Manhattan and I passed the Chabad Mitzvah Tank in Midtown. I had my handy-dandy video camera with me, so you can see:

(I have to pause thank Beka Economopoulos here for planting the seeds of this idea. Beka works for Greenpeace. I saw her speak at the Yearly Kos conference and then suggested that we at See3 invite her to co-present with us at the Craigslist Foundation Nonprofit Boot Camp in New York a couple weeks ago. Beka runs the Greenpeace online organizing program and has seen some amazing success with it and we are grateful for her participation with us in what turned out to be a terrific and well-attended session.)

The average organization, if they have a social network strategy at all, think of social networks as a way to meet people, with the goal of then convincing those people to give the organization their email address, go to their donation link or otherwise become members/donors/activists of the organization in the same way everyone else is. Meaning, they will get the same emails, see the same website, and take the same path to further activity as other prospects. They are using the social networks to meet people, but only see their outreach as successful if they can get those people to do what everyone else is doing.

Part of the problem here is that organizational management hasn’t yet internalized social networking metrics. For Greenpeace, those 68,000 friends on MySpace are just like 68,000 email addresses. For most organizations that would not be true. You are looking at email opens and average gifts from your online donations and these metrics are not really reflective of the potential you have in social networking. (Allan Benamer, a big believer in these tools, writes about this problem on his blog. You should also be reading Beth Kanter and Ruby Sinreich on these subjects.)

Now think of the Lubavitch philosophy. You are a MySpace person. You are comfortable on MySpace. I build a MySpace page to show you I can speak your language. This is where you live. Acceptance means I have to stop trying to get you to leave. Acceptance means creating things you can do right there on MySpace. Acceptance means treating my ability to message you on MySpace the same as if you are on my email list – without forcing you to change.

When you start to care enough you might come on over to our site. When you are impressed with how we “walk the walk” you might get out of your comfort zone by doing something offline. I am not going to force you to change. I am not going to limit your access or the information you can get because you live this “alternative lifestyle”. I am going to respect you for who you are! (Or at least I am going to pretend to.)

All of this is connected to the permission-based marketing society we are in today. Top down advertising is working less and less. Word-of-mouth is more important than ever.

Showing people what you do and why it matters is critical to capture people’s attention. Getting your supporters to recruit others is becoming a central strategy. Your content and your passion are what will carry the day and bring people to your cause. Social media marketing is not about tricks or techniques as much as it is about finding your authentic voice and inviting people to share in your passion at the level they are most comfortable in the venue of their choosing.

[The irony of all of this is that Chabad-Lubavitch does everything wrong on their own MySpace page, which I assume is run by one person in a decentralized way. They don’t follow their own script for offline engagement, which would also bring them online success. On MySpace they seem insular, political and shrill – everything they don’t seem in person.]

In Sum

Be passionate in your work and be grateful to those who come and take interest – at every level. Meet people where they are without judgment or condescension. Make your programs and your content accessible to those who come from a different place than you do. This philosophy is the core of what you need to be successful in social networking strategy.

Tell me how you do or don’t apply these principles to your own online and offline marketing by leaving a comment.

All of our clients are very interested in the number of visitors to their website or the number of views of their videos. Makes sense right. I want to know whether the investment I made in this marketing is paying off. But what we tell clients is that in addition to basic tracking you need to define what you mean by payoff. If you are trying to raise money, count the money. If you are trying to educate people, you have to define a successful educational interaction before you can count it.

When we talk “viral videos” we tell the clients the who is as important as the how many. I can guarantee your video to get tons of views if you let us do Jacksss-style stunts or not-so-subtly incorporate busty models into our concept — but is this the engaged audience you are looking for? Probably not. Will a list acquired this way perform well later when you ask them to do something else? Surely not.

The issue of website traffic is big in the commercial world because it relates directly to ad revenue. Counting site traffic — hits, visitors, “uniques” — have been mired in controversy since the early days of the web. The problem is that my server keeps logs. Those logs only show a kind of raw data about page loads, image loads and the like. To translate that into a number of visitors I have to make some assumptions. For example, someone surfing my site from the same IP address (a unique number that corresponds to the access point of the Internet) who accesses specific pages (based on the logs) over a contiguous period of time represents a visit. Problem is, every program that parses my server logs does this a little differently. So the best use of the numbers is to show trends and growth.

There is an even bigger problem for companies such as comScore, Nielson/NetRatings and Alexa that are trying to tell us how many people went to a site when they don’t even have access to the server logs. So they are using a variety of methods from surveys to panels. comScore, for example, says they have “2 million participants under continuous measurement.” And then they extrapolate.

The big news in this area is that Nielson/NetRatings, recognizing that Web 2.0 is changing behavior, thought they needed a different way to measure. Here’s the issue: On many new website pages, you can see lots of content without reloading the page. For example, my Google home page has RSS feeds from many different news and blog sources. I can click on those feeds and expand them, without reloading the page. I could read all day on the same page.

So Nielson/NetRatings did a new calculation where they added time spent as a factor. Guess what happened? All hell broke loose when their new calculation showed that AOL was on top — above MySpace and Yahoo and Google and MSN. Read more about it at CNET’s News.com.