One of my most favorite conferences of the year is the Making Your Media Matter Conference. It is put on by American University’s Center for Social Media. This is the place to go if you are interested in the intersection of film, video, documentary, web video and social change. And you should be interested — this is the most important communications method available to nonprofit organizations. We are moderating the panel on short-shorts and new platforms.
Here’s the info on the conference. It is small and ALWAYS sells out — so reserve your spot.
The Center for Social Media is sponsoring the Making Your Media Matter conference on Feb. 7-8 at American University. The conference, geared towards established and aspiring filmmakers, non-profit communications leaders, funders and students, is a place where leading-edge practitioners learn and share cutting-edge practices for creating media that matters. The conference will feature panel discussions on the latest tools and trends in creating and distributing social issue media, including panels on games for social change, intercultural media, and short-shorts and new platforms; demos of cutting edge practices; networking opportunities as well as the chance to hear from our keynote speakers, filmmaker Byron Hurt and outreach expert Sonya Childress. Click here to register and learn more.
SPACE IS LIMITED! REGISTER NOW TO MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A SPOT
Our favorite conference of the year is the NTC - the annual conference of NTEN - the Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network. This is the conference were more than one thousand nonprofit professionals gather to share and learn about how technology can advance the mission of nonprofit organizations.
I will be leading a session about online video — more to come on that — and we are once again a sponsor of the DoGooderTV Nonprofit Video Awards, sponsored by See3 and NTEN — more to come on that also.
I am very excited that David Pogue, my favorite New York Times technology columnist, is the keynote speaker. For those of you who read this blog you know that I am a big fan of David Pogue. You can see previous posts from me on his work here and here.
“Destroying Tokyo since 1954.”
(From Godzilla, if you couldn’t guess.)
Our tag line at See3 is “Empowering Nonprofits by Powering Their Media”
Nonprofits have tag lines also. Some are descriptive, “The Jewish Service Corp” for AVODAH and Easter Seals “Disability Services”. Columbia University “In the City of New York.” Well, duh.
CFED says “Expanding Economic Opportunity.” It’s good to have a tag line that’s hard to argue with.
The Red Cross could have this tag line “One crisis after another” (Of course they would be talking about their own leadership.)
Consultant Nancy Schwartz is doing some research about nonprofit tag lines. Take the nonprofit tag line survey here and I promise to share with you the results once Nancy has it all put together.
As part of the new YouTube for Nonprofits, Google has integrated Google Checkout donation processing for organizations in the program. What this means is that if you are in the program, viewers will see a “Donate” button both on your channel page and when your video is playing in a standard page.
If you are a 501(c)3 it’s a no-brainer to sign up. Why not?
What we don’t know yet is whether it will work. If a decent percentage of people who view a nonprofit video actually give, then we have a revolution on our hands. The viewers/donors might look similar to what we see on Facebook causes but we will wait until we have some real data before speculating further.
What we at See3 would like to propose to Google is an addition to their nonprofit program that could greatly enhance the value to organizations. We all know that a newsletter sign-up or advocacy ask is an easier ask than a donation. Imagine if next to the Donate button we had a “Join This Cause” button. And when a registered YouTube user clicked on it, the email address (and other info) of the user was transfered to the nonprofit. (Like with comments, the system could tell a non-registered user that they needed to register.)
Another approach — not as good for the nonprofits but maybe more acceptable to Google — would be more like the Facebook approach. Don’t give me their email, but connect me to them through the social network. I think there has to be something more than Subscribe — which they already have. There has to be a way to say, “I am a supporter, but this doesn’t mean I have to watch every video you produce all the time.” A one-click to Join would have the most benefit if it enabled the nonprofit to message the viewer on a regular basis beyond pushing out new videos.
Facebook has taught us that people will opt-in to support the cause far more than they will donate. You can see the evidence in the mostly small donation totals in the Causes application.
Maybe we can make this request to Google through out friends and partners at NTEN. What do you think Holly?
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 Hebrewacronym 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.
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.
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.
It seems like everyone these days is talking about how nonprofits need to use more video, especially online. To all of these people, I say “Welcome!” We founded See3 and DoGooderTV to be THE video people for nonprofits and so it is very nice indeed to see our colleagues starting to beat the same drum.
The latest nonprofit consultant/professional talking about video was Tom Belford from The Agitator blog.
“As I’ve written before, I think it is crucial for nonprofits to master this medium for conducting your fundraising, advocacy and educational efforts,” Tom writes.
* Over 133 million Americans watched online video in July — or 74% of US internet users.
* They watched more than 9 billion videos, 27% of them on Google sites (mostly YouTube).
* More than one-in-three (37%) US internet users viewed video on YouTube.
* Online viewers watched an average of more than 3 hours of online video during the month, with an average video duration of 2.7 minutes.
* The average viewer consumed 68 videos, or more than two per day.
So while we don’t yet have all the metrics we need to show that video will actually improve/increase fundraising online, we know that this is the content people are gravitating towards. You don’t have to have more metrics to understand that in order to capture and keep the attention of you target audience that you have to have good, compelling visual stories. And now we know, online video is the best way to do that.
Mining is in the news a lot recently because of the terrible tragedy in Utah where six miners are presumed dead in a mine collapse and at least three more have been killed trying to rescue them. Another kind of mining made today’s news. It’s called mountaintop removal and it is the most common mining in West Virginia and Appalachia generally. It is just what the name implies. They remove the top of a mountain to expose the coal vein. In addition to destroying the trees and vegetation there is another big problem with this technique — where does the mountain top end up? The answer is in the valley, where the streams and rivers run. With an entire mountaintop in the river the river stops, or gets diverted. It is a big mess.
The news today is that the people in the Bush administration that regulate this industry — who happen to have been industry lobbyists before they joined the administration, surprise surprise — just announced new “rules” that basically interpret a law saying you can’t mine near the streams and rivers to mean that you can dump all your waste in streams and rivers. Obvious isn’t it. (And they say China is being Orwellian with language as they prepare for the Olympics.) You can read about it more in today’s New York Times.
But this is all very abstract and if you were an organization trying to mobilize people against this practice, the most powerful weapon is video. Show people what “mountaintop removal” really is and they will be shocked and surprised that we are allowing corporate profits to decimate whole areas of the country. The folks at I Love Mountains.Org have done just that. Their video was a runner up in the See3 - NTEN video contest this year. Their video is too long, and there are other production quality issues with it, but they don’t really matter. Just look and see what it means to SHOW people something versus just telling them about it. How are you showing your issue?
As many of you know, I think the best show on TV and probably the best show ever is HBO’s The Wire. It’s great because it’s real. Last season it had a chilling look at what is happening to urban education in the face of gangs and drugs through the eyes of four middle school students. Watch it and you will never think of the problems of public school the same way.
My father told me last week that there was some traffic jam in Baltimore because they were filming the final episode. I am very sad to see it go. John from Cincinnati seems banal in comparison.
The story in the Times today talk about the person who was the inspiration for the character Omar Little. Omar is a guy who robs drug dealers. He lives on the edge in a world of violence and drugs. And somehow, he’s not a bad guy. You want him to live and to eventually find the life of peace and love and intellectual stimulation where he would seem most comfortable. The real Omar (actually, one of the people that make up the composite that is Omar) is Donnie Andrews who, after serving a long prison sentence for murder, has become one of a team of former addicts and criminals working to get kids off the streets. This is very powerful stuff.
Organizations that work with students and disasters and under served populations and almost everything else have these powerful stories of hardship and of success. They should see the power in them and dig them out and write about them and capture these people on video and in pictures and in their own words. It is these stories that make connections for people to the problems that are otherwise totally abstract. If I want to make a difference I want to make a difference for a person, not an issue. This is, of course, what we do at See3 and I sometimes feel like a broken record talking about it. But it works and it’s surprising how much the nonprofit sector still needs to hear it.
I am here at the Yearly Kos Convention which is being held in Chicago, home of See3 Communications. For the uninitiated, Yearly Kos is a gathering of what’s called the Netroots - liberal/left bloggers who have changed the face of American politics. Kos comes from the website DailyKos, which is the top rated left/liberal blog and one of the most trafficked blogs online. Last year, the bloggers and community around the website DailyKos decided to meet in person. And because all the bloggers were coming, so came the politicians and the organizations wanting to get this community writing about these issues.
Right now I am in a session called Video for Change. Of course this is what we do here at See3. The people on the panel are all talking about hour-long or feature length documentaries. Interesting, but honestly not something that is really in the grasp of most organizations or individuals. Two of the panelists are from Robert Greenwald’s shop, Brave New Films. They do hard-hitting documentaries designed to make change - against Fox News or Wal-Mart.
I spoke at a conference with Robert Greenwald — the Make Your Documentary Matter conference from American University’s Center for Social Media. And one thing he said was that he does not believe you can make a film to be great — as in Oscar great — and make a film designed to make change. According to Greenwald, these things require different sets of choices that are not compatible.
In the session right now, Adam Chapnick from DocWorkers.com is speaking about talking to the organizations that are interested in the issue before you make the film — rather than simply making the film you want to make and then seeking an organization that can help you distribute it. In contrast, our focus at See3 is on empowering the organizations to make the films that advance their mission themselves.
Jim Gilliam is speaking now about the Wal-Mart film they did. He is saying that the research was a mix of what they got themselves and what the organizations — such as the unions — had done over time. They are talking about how the film was distributed in more than 7,000 screenings - school groups, unions, home screenings, church groups, etc.
Tracy Fleischman from Brave New Theaters is talking now about online marketing of the films. First, set up a website. She is saying that the site should be as much of a resource as possible, so people interested in the issue can use the site for research. Made short ads, had people vote on the title of the film, had people voting on different covers for the film — lots of ways to get people involved.
Adam is saying that you need to have people feel ownership — send us your videos or photos, vote on something, the more time people sign something or click the more likely they are to go the next step. He is also saying what we know from all internet marketing — create landing pages that are specific for specific types of groups and audiences.
Tracy now talking about how Brave New Films is focusing on short-form video and not the feature length pieces as they did in the past. For example, they have a site called FoxAttacks.com which is using short pieces to advocate for specific issues — for example trying to get the Nevada Democratic Party to not have a debate on Fox News.
