Free tool of the week: VoiceThread for nonprofits

flickr/ //amy//

When I first found out about VoiceThread a while back, it struck me as something that foundations and nonprofits could make good use of. It’s a cool way to capture people’s engagement with a topic and image—to weave the threads of their voices into the story being  told.

A VoiceThread is a multimedia slideshow of photos, video, or documents that allows people to easily leave comments and join the conversation. Visually, it’s a slideshow screen surrounded by a mosaic of little avatars of all the people who comment on the image. When you click on the avatar you hear them or see what they’ve written or drawn. People can comment in five simple ways: by telephone, by computer microphone, by web cam, by writing text, or by drawing.

Once you’ve created the central slideshow story—you can invite people to view it and comment on it. Thus the conversation grows.

Wondering how you might use this free tool?

• How about getting your donors to add their voices to a story about a common cause they all support, telling why they support it?
• How about showcasing your grantees’ work by asking them to add their comments to a VoiceThread story you create about an issue they’re working on?
• How about showing how real living human beings are affected by the work you do? Ask them to add comments to a VoiceThread about how one of your programs has helped them.
• Honoring someone special? Create a VoiceThread testimonial to them including all the voice of people whose lives they’ve touched
• Trying to build a social movement? Here’s a very visual way to start—tell your VoiceThread story and ask supporters to add their supportive comments. Watch the little avatars multiply!

These ideas should help you get started thinking about ways you might incorporate VoiceThread into your website, social media platforms, emails to help achieve strategic communication goals.  It’s very easy to share—embeddable, emailable, etc.

Now, for a little introduction from the Voicethreads folks. And here’s a great step-by-step how-to slideshow, and an example of how educators are using VoiceThread to carry out conversations with students. It’s a very versatile tool…as you’ll see as you browse through the collection of existing VoiceThreads; everything from podcasting tutorials to art exhibitions to children’s voices about what’s happening in Darfur.

As usual, I played around with this free tool—just enough to create a very simple 1-slide central story about the issue of homeless teens. When you get to the page, just click on the lone avatar for the ABCD Foundation to hear the story. (I pretended I was a foundation interested in highlighting the work of its grantees working on that issue.) You’re going to have to IMAGINE other little avatars surrounding it—each from a grantee talking about the impact of their work with homeless teens. (It would be terrific to have some of those voices be the teens themselves.)

There are a few different pricing levels beyond what you can get for free (3 min. maximums on recordings, max. of 50 comments, etc.). But, even the Pro account, which gives you the most creative freedom is only $60 per year.

I see a lot of potential of this tool for the nonprofit sector–and not just for educators. Nothing is more fascinating to us than other people–what they think, what they say and do, what they support. VoiceThread is a unique way to combine your organization’s voice with the voices of your supporters or beneficiaries. It makes for richer, more inclusive, more credible storytelling. Plus—it’s pretty darn easy to use! Try it.

CC photo credit: //amy//

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Webinars for Nonprofits: Getting Started

flickr/TechSoup for Libraries

By now, most of us have participated in a webinar, but it’s one thing to participate and another to produce one. So, here’s  a quick guide to getting started in webinar production for nonprofits.

In light of current budget blues, traveling to a conference or workshop isn’t always possible anymore for your key audiences. Webinars can help your organization tighten its belt by helping share its knowledge and best practices without incurring travel costs for your staff or participants.

The first big step in deciding whether to do a webinar is completing your strategic communications plan. Your goals and strategies always determine your tactics and channels, not vice versa. So, don’t start by deciding you want to do a webinar and then coming up with an idea of what it might be about.

However, if—as part of your overall plan—you find your organization needs to communicate with a particular, far-flung audience in a fairly in-depth way (for example, to convey information or to explain a process) it might be worth considering a webinar.

Webinars don’t lend themselves to every topic, so keep that in mind. If eye contact or body language is important to your topic, you may want to look at another medium. Likewise, if you need more than an hour and a half to cover the subject, think about a series of shorter webinars or use another tool. Attention spans are challenged by webinars that last more the 90 minutes. Also, for small audiences within a short geographic distance (including internal audiences), face-to-face meetings may build stronger relationships than a webinar. Weigh all the pros and cons before you decide.

Anyone who’s taken a webinar knows they’re not all created equal. Some falter because of technical problems, inadequate planning, or poor presentors. Good webinars may look seamless and easy to do, but they’re the ones that have taken the most time to plan and carry out well.

Here are a few great resources to make sure that—if your nonprofit  chooses to conduct a webinar—it’s a raving success.

• First, look over these two wonderful articles from TechSoup on how to plan and how to conduct an effective webinar.
• You’ll also need to understand the range of available tools—here’s a list by Idealware that spells out what capabilities you can have in webinars, and reviews some of the webinar products you can use, including prices (scroll down to the section called Online Seminar Tools).
• And finally, HubSpot’s 10 best practices for webinars.

You nonprofits and foundations who already have experience  at conducting webinars—please share your experiences and add any advice you have below!

CC photo credit: TechSoup for Libraries

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Free tool of the week: Fenton’s Best Practice Guides

You might want to take a look at these free, downloadable guides to communications best practices put out by Fenton Communications, a firm that works with nonprofits. I’ve just listed some of the guides. For others, go to the Fenton Web site.

Watta? (What are they talking about) guide is designed to give you a well-grounded overview of Web 2.0, social media, and how to succeed in this new communications paradigm.

Proving Your Worth: 10 Ways to Measure the Impact of Your Communications shows you how to evaluate whether your communications efforts are hitting the mark and getting results.

This Just In summarizes 10 lessons from more than 25 years of learning from Fenton Communications’ partnerships with nonprofit clients to make social change.

Take a Position: 10 Tips to Set Your Organization Apart talks about positioning and how you set yourself apart from the other 1.4 million nonprofits in the U.S.

Now Hear This: The Nine Laws of Successful Advocacy Communications helps you learn how to describe what your organization does and what it stands for.

Making a Name for Yourself: Branding for Nonprofits explains the fundamentals involved in creating a successful brand in today’s saturated market.

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The best fundraising advice I’ve ever heard!

Absolutely every nonprofit executive and development or communications director should listen to this 45-minute audio presentation–The Language of Change.

No exceptions.

No excuses.

You need to hear Tom Suddes‘ brilliant advice about framing your fund raising…not just the way you talk and think about it, but the way you do it. He focuses on 20 common words and meanings, all of which need to be replaced by new ones. For 90% of you, this talk will turn your world on its head.

It may be the most important thing you listen to all year.

We owe big thanks to Network for Good for bringing this to us all free!

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Collaborators, get ready to ride the Wave

I’m taking a bit of a vacation this week, but I wanted to follow up my last post on collaboration tools with this video from Google about the Wave–rumored to be out this fall. It’s a fairly long video because there’s a lot to preview, but once you see what Wave is going to be capable of—all those other wonderful collaboration tools may be unnecessary. Really, take the time to watch it. It’s pretty mind-boggling…in a good way.

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Free tool of the week: Digital Identity Workbook for nonprofits

I’m so glad I found this gem last week when Nancy White released it on her blog. It’s too good to keep to myself another day, so I’m taking a break from my review of digital storytelling tools to share it. (Back next week with Glogster!)

It’s a new hands-on workbook for nonprofits about their digital identities—how to think about and intentionally plan for your organization’s online profile. Because your digital identity is gleaned from dozens of different online sources, you have to know what’s already out there and be strategic about what additional information/resources you want to add.

Here’s how the workbook—entitled ThisIsMe—defines digital identity.

As you use more and more online services which allow user content and discussion, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Delicious, Twitter, Google, blogs and so on, you leave a ‘digital footprint’. This ‘footprint’ is what makes up your Digital Identity– all those things which can be found out about you from the content you post, the profiles you make, the conversations you have with others and the things other people post about you.

This identity is closely tied to your organizational culture, your brand, your reputation, and your future! You can’t control it completely, but you should understand it, monitor it, and manage it as much as possible—always in an authentic way.

The workbook is a series of exercises and worksheets that lead you deeper into understanding your current digital profile and its implications for your key audiences, then to the ethical and best practice decisions you’ll need to make going forward. Ultimately, it helps you manage your digital identity and set policies that guide future organizational behavior. It also includes a helpful digital identity mapping tool (above photo).

I have yet to see a better guide to this topic, which is getting to be a MUST DISCUSS issue for many nonprofits who now use social media and web 2.5 tools. Make time to use these worksheets; have this discussion sooner rather than later.

By the way, this workbook—thanks to Creative Commons licensing—was based on an original from the UK.

Nonprofit storytelling—beware of impact stories that don’t link to public policy

flickr/armadillo444

You can’t swing a cat these days (I never would) without hitting a storytelling workshop for nonprofits. It’s kind of the new silver bullet for conveying organizational impact.

I’m a big fan of stories, but I’m a little concerned about the approach the nonprofit sector seems to be taking.

What concerns me is the drive to tell episodic stories of individual success without tying them into a larger thematic policy context. Making an emotional connection is essential, but it’s not enough.

Very few of these impact stories reveal underlying causes, or assign responsibility for those causes to policymakers and the citizens who vote for them. This tends to reinforce the dominant American frame of individual rather than societal responsibility for the solution of social problems—a frame that the media has helped create and perpetuate.

By telling stories about their impact on individual lives, nonprofits and foundations may be shooting themselves in the foot with that silver bullet. Such storytelling can garner dollars and support (no small thing, I realize), but it doesn’t necessarily lead to social change. Nonprofits have to get more intentional about using impact stories to achieve both their short-term survival goals and their long-term social change goals.

Often, annual reports, newsletters, web sites, or videos that string together emotionally evocative stories about how a nonprofit has helped a few of its beneficiaries are fashioned for fund-raising. They pluck heartstrings, but don’t connect those people’s situations to the larger context of public decision making. In fact, they can leave readers and viewers with the impression that solutions to social problems are up to individuals and nonprofits, rather than to the public.

For instance, a nonprofit tells a moving impact story about a troubled youth who’s turned her life around. The nonprofit may get a temporary boost from that, but the story does nothing to show the larger context that led to her troubles or to explain how citizens acting together can eliminate the obstacles she faced. It’s all about her success at bettering herself and the organization’s role in those efforts. There’s no societal accountability built in.

Without tying stories of individuals to our collective responsibility for the policies and systems that have shaped their lives—we’re unintentionally reinforcing the notion that their troubles were their own doing. At the same time, we’re preventing audience members from making the connection between themselves and the people in the story. They may feel momentary sympathy and admiration for the story’s protagonist, but they are still just consumers of the story, not participants in it. We need to help citizens understand they play an influential role in any story about social issues.

The news media are notorious for gobbling up episodic stories about individuals. Media relations experts may tell you that’s the way to get headlines, but it’s not the way to change society. Most news stories strip away context to a point where the goal is provoking a superficial emotional response, certainly not empowering citizens to take action against injustice.

Here are a few broad-stroke examples of how news (and advertising) use individual responsibility frames in their storytelling.

1. Though study after study shows that public policies and systems are a huge influence in the American obesity problem, public discussion about this issue still focuses on dieting and self-restraint as the solution. If someone’s overweight—it’s their own fault and their responsibility to change.
2. In the environmental realm, much more attention is paid to how we should each change our individual behavior than to how we can collectively make big  policy changes that would have much deeper impact.
3. In health care, the emphasis is on individuals making sure they get tested for disease rather than targeting the causes of those diseases through public policy change.

The last thing the nonprofit sector should be doing is feeding the media episodic stories—that’s counterproductive to its long-term goals for social change. It’s easy to jump on the impact storytelling bandwagon—especially when you’re hard pressed for funding. But think carefully about the real story you’re trying to tell. Don’t let it just be about one person’s struggle or one family’s success or one neighborhood’s make-over. Ensure citizens understand their role in righting wrongs and exactly what actions they need to take.

One way is to tell the individual’s story first—grabbing the reader’s attention—then concisely explain who’s responsible for creating these conditions, what the potential solutions are, and how the public can drive toward those solutions. Weave in a compelling statistic or two—appeal to both sides of the brain.

Please read this recent interview with Shanto Iyengar, director of the Political Communication Lab at Stanford University and the author of Is Anyone Responsible, on the difference between episodic and thematic stories and how they influence citizen understanding of public issues. Remember his remarks when you’re writing web copy, news releases, video scripts, and anything else where you feature stories.

I’m going to be covering other aspects of issue framing for nonprofits and foundations in future posts.

CC photo credit: armadillo444

Free tool of the week: Yodio melds narration and images

In the next few weeks, I’m hoping to give you the low-down on some free online media that combine slides, photos, voice-overs, graphics, and/or music. I think they have interesting potential applications for nonprofits. But first, I want to try them!

This week I tackled Yodio, which allows you to synchronize voice-over (that you phone in) with a series of photos into a narrated slide show. It’s like a podcast with images. They say it’s simple and quick—and once you learn it it is. But it took me about 3 hours to create the Yodio below—from gathering and uploading pictures to writing and recording a script. If I had to do it again, it would probably take half that time.

I wanted to give you an example of what media like this might be able to do for nonprofits. (The Yodio gallery doesn’t have any nonprofit examples.) So, I put together a fake 2-minute lobbying spot for a clean water and land referendum that was passed last fall in Minnesota. Other uses for media like this might include: key takeaways from a research report, announcing a new project, impact interviews with beneficiaries of your organization, brief testimonials from donors, a virtual tour of a new facility, a teaser for an issue campaign, even introducing your staff.

I like Yodio, but I think it’s going to get even better as they introduce new features (which I hope are still free). As with most media like this, there’s a good free level of membership and a better paid level of membership. I used the free membership.

Here are a few things to keep in mind.

1) Right now, you have to record the audio track for each photo separately—kind of laborious, but they have an option once you’re on the phone that lets you can record many of these tracks in one call. Just stay on the line after you’re through with your first track, and they’ll give you an option to record another one right away.

2) There are various options for transitioning from one slide to another—I just chose dissolve, but I think if this were for real, I would have tinkered with that. Some of these dissolves are great—others are clunky and draw attention to themselves.

3) Name each track that you record—this text will scroll as the slide is displayed. It’s another way to reinforce your message.

4) You’ll notice there’s a time lag between when my voice stops and the end of the track—it doesn’t make it easy to transition to another slide in mid-sentence. Yodio tells me that I could have used the phone key prompt (#1) to end  the recording right when I stopped speaking rather than waiting for the audio prompt. I think that would have solved this problem. Live and learn.

5) When you’re recording over the phone, use the very best phone you’ve got. And try to keep it at the same distance throughout the whole recording, while using the same volume whenever you speak. You’ll notice there are a few distracting modulation changes in my piece—that’s because I recorded a couple of the tracks at a different time than I did the rest. Record all at once to avoid this.

All you experienced Yodio users, any other tips for folks?

(By the way, I mailed Ana from New Mexico the free Cass Wheeler book.)

Nonprofit branding and the role of organizational culture

flickr/onlinewoman

I’ve watched the evolution of nonprofit branding since the topic first hit The Chronicle of Philanthropy years ago.

Thankfully, a group of marketing thought leaders—including people like Seth Godin and Chris Brogan—have helped shift branding from a selling strategy to more of an organizational development strategy, with emphasis on exceeding customer demand, being a good community member, and creating loyal tribes.

I’m just one of many “thought-followers” on this topic, but I’m intrigued by the important role that organizational culture plays in nonprofit brands. So, I’m adding my two cents to what greater minds have already shared. Be sure to check out some of their insights in the links below.

Modern branding places control of your brand with your supporters and potential supporters. Their feelings and perceptions about your organization are your brand.

Their perceptions hinge on 1) how well their interactions with your organization meet their needs—not just tangible needs, but intangible needs like connection, participation, contribution, trust, even delight; and 2) the opinions of people they trust.

Let me add, your supporters are networked, smart, and can spot “spin” a mile away.

So, if they’re smart and their perceptions are your brand, how can you influence them? One way is by looking to your organizational culture; how you behave. As brand expert Marty Neumeier says: “A living brand is a pattern of behavior, not a stylistic veneer.”

Your print and electronic communications are your organization’s appearance.  How your organization behaves is its character. Appearance is important, but solid, long-lasting relationships are based on character, and the best gauge of that is your organizational culture.

Should you behave in dishonest, irresponsible, thoughtless, greedy, self-centered ways—today’s smart markets are going to know it. They won’t trust you and they won’t support you—no matter how emotionally moving your annual report, how well differentiated your market position, or how consistent your messages. There are no secrets, no hiding places, no rugs to sweep broken promises under. The culture of your organization is transparent, whether you want it to be or not. It shines through in every interaction.

Here are a few things to consider as you think about how your culture affects your brand.

• The branding process is a two-way conversation between the inside (your organization’s staff/board) and the outside (your organization’s supporters). Two sets of real human beings. Your staff/board makes a promise to your supporters to accomplish a specific social change within a specific population and geography. (It’s important to be clear and focused about the promise you’re making. Make sure you have the capacity to fulfill it. ) At the same time, you make a promise to yourselves—and to your supporters—that you will live out a particular set of values in your work. Hopefully, those values include honesty, responsibility, fairness, generosity, reliability, and compassion. Every participant in your organization needs to know them by heart, and clearly understand what value-based behaviors are expected of them. Not just for the good of your supporters, but for the good of your internal culture. Your CEO plays an essential role in setting the tone and modeling your organizational culture, and the marketing department helps create communications products. But your “brand team” is your entire board and staff. Your “brand voice” is the human voice. Ideally, there should be no difference between internal and external behavior.  Staff and board treat each other as generously as they treat supporters. What you see is what you get. That’s authenticity.

• It’s important for your staff/board to understand all the dimensions of this two-way conversation, which extend far beyond printed and electronic communications. Whether it’s the receptionist greeting a visitor, the voicemail message that callers get after hours, the magazines on the table in your lobby, a meeting between a board member and a potential donor, a site visit or client interview, a small group tutorial, a large conference, a chance meeting with a supporter outside of work—every interaction related to your work is a moment of relationship-building and branding. In those moments you make the choice to act on your organization’s values; you make the choice to keep the promise. This even extends to the choices you make about your office space.

• Take responsibility for what goes wrong or falls short. Remember, this conversation is between human beings. No human being is perfect, and most of the time owning up leads to forgiveness and even support. Carlo Questa, of Creation in Common, suggests you set milestones for yourself along the path to your promise, and let staff/board and supporters know that at those junctures you’re going to be providing status reports. When you hit a milestone, if your success isn’t what you hoped it would be, let people know why you think that happened and how you’re going to make a mid-course correction. Either try a different tack or revise your promise. Be flexible and humble enough to embrace new ideas. Carlo also advises not making excuses about “external forces” beyond your control more than once. And, make sure to tell your supporters how you’re going to adjust to those forces in order to succeed.

• Align your appearance with your character. Make sure your values come through loud and clear in the design and the content of your communications. Try to avoid exaggeration, vagueness (from either laziness or the desire to hide something), claiming victory too soon, withholding information in the hope that no one will notice, and trying to look like something you’re not. Don’t assume you know what your supporters want from your communications—ask them every chance you get (without becoming a nuisance.) These few communications are under your control—unlike much of the rest of the conversation. Don’t waste the chance to meet the needs of your supporters while clearly demonstrating your progress on the promise.

• Open your ears and doors. Show supporters that you’re interested in them as people not just wallets or volunteers. Think about how your work and your promise can help them fulfill their own aspirations. Ask their opinions and preferences through polls on your Web site and social media sites, or make sparing use of online instruments like SurveyMonkey. Use results to help guide your decision-making. (Author and PR strategist Geoff Livingston recommends developing a process for collecting and vetting all your stakeholders’ feedback–not just with the communications department, but with the entire organization.) If your supporters are on FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc., have a convenient presence there. Communicate with them when you’re not asking for money or support—check in, invite them to visit or to call with questions, make sure they know about your events, ask them if there is any way you can help (information, referrals). When you’re interacting with them, be fully attentive. Be the kind of friend you want them to be.

Nonprofits are not corporations. Their work will never be, nor should be, entirely shaped by consumer opinion and demand. But, working as they do on programs to promote the common good, shouldn’t nonprofits be modeling behavior that contributes to the common good? Take a closer look at your organizational culture—does it really reflect the kind of values you embrace?

Your culture is a great place to start living your brand. In fact, it may be the only place you can.

What are your ideas about nonprofit brands?

The Brand Gap, Marty Neumeier, Neutron LLC

Nonprofit Branding, Carlo Cuesta, Creation in Common

Worried about your branding? What exactly are you worried about? Steve Cebalt, Main Street Marketing

Friday the 13th Entertainment: Two TED talks and 10 trends you NEED to know about

Here are two TED talks that will raise your spirits and get you excited, and 10 trends to get your brain buzzing. All of these are relevant to the work of nonprofits and foundations!

Watch this TED talk  first—it’s Tim Berners-Lee on the next stage of development for the Web–from documents to data. (He’s the guy who invented the World Wide Web.)

Foundations and nonprofits have so much valuable data they could share for the betterment of the world–do it! (Don’t be a data-hugger!) Here’s the guy to convince you.

Now watch this one—which was referred to by Tim. This is Hans Rosling, a Swedish global health professor who shows how data can be creatively visualized and change our understanding of the developed and developing world. He’s here to prove the impossible is possible. Wow–I could grow to love data.

Now read this often amazing article from Time about 10 big ideas that are changing our world that everyone needs to know about.