State of the Practice: It's Got Me Thinking

The Communications Network has just released its most recent survey of foundation communications professionals, asking them questions about, among other things: what they do, how they spend their time, who their audiences are, what their priorities are, and what their deepest communications wishes might be.

The responses from 155 of these folks include some good news, some bad news, and some downright confusing news. I won't summarize the findings here, since Bruce and Michael do that well enough in the report, but I do want to comment on some specific findings that are stuck in my mental craw. I'd love to hear what's stuck in yours!

1) The majority of respondents (59%) work in organizations with a communications staff of two or less.

This is not the first time we have heard this and yet we often ignore this reality when talking about innovative communications practices, new communications technologies, and solutions to communications gaps and shortfalls in the sector. No staff of two people can adequately manage the number of information sharing opportunities and technologies that are out there without a) the resources to get outside help, b) a super clear strategy for what they will focus on and internal support for that focus, and c) sector wide technologies and services that support and facilitate information sharing capacity for the entire sector not just one organization at a time.

(The effort to keep up with "time-saving" communications platforms sometimes reminds me of when the washer and dryer were invented to "save" housewives time only for those same women to end up spending nearly as much time as they did a century ago on housework.)

2) A majority (65%) of foundation communicators said their top objective is “increasing public understanding of the issues our foundation concentrates on”.

We at IssueLab find this to be very good news. Focusing on the very issues that motivate and inform the sector's work is completely right on. Yet, what's disconcerting is that only 30% of respondents viewed "providing research to others in the field" as a priority. I know we are biased here at IssueLab but I would like to think that research is in fact one of the fundamental tools for increasing public understanding. Perhaps so few respondents prioritized research because the survey question framed research as an objective rather than a tool but the responses do make me wonder about exactly how foundation communicators do view the role of research. Is it a knowledge base they can draw from for content development and awareness building or just another grant product to be promoted?

It's true that many of us struggle with making research more relevant and meaningful but it's critical that we recognize its fundamental value. As long as foundations continue funding research -- primarily as a means to increasing the understanding of complex issues -- we should be prioritizing it as a rich source of knowledge for our communications and education efforts.

3) "Increasing public understanding" is a top communications objective and yet the "general public" is a low-priority in terms of targeted audiences.

This is good news -- if -- it means that communications professionals no longer accept "the general public" as a vague, catch-all audience category that can no more be targeted than it can be measured. But it's not such good news if we have simply replaced the "general public" with other vague catch-all audience categories such as "influencers". The majority of respondents say that their top targets are policymakers (56%), community leaders (54%) and current grantees (53%), relying on a different mix of communications tools (phone, email, websites, blogs, and social media) to reach out to these audiences. But the majority of foundation communicators (56%) also are not using any kind of audience research to develop strategy. So how we are identifying influencers and how do we know what works best in reaching them?

Communications evaluation and measurement are notoriously hard (how does one for instance measure public understanding?) but if we are going to make public understanding our top objective and we believe policymakers and community leaders are key to changing that understanding then really we need to answer 1) who are the influencers and what kind of influencers are we talking about? 2) which communications tools seem best suited to reaching those influencers?, and 3) did we change their understanding? My guess is that most communications professionals have hunches about each of these questions. I am a strong believer in hunches but so that we don't slip right back into the "general public" trap it might be good to articulate some of these hunches and back them up with audience research and evaluation.

4) Almost three-quarters (74%) of respondents say they go through a process that produces a written communications plan. But only about a third (36%) say that their communications plan really guides their daily work.

I will keep my comments on this one short because it is really fodder for a much larger conversation. But in a nutshell I don't find this to be bad news. Why? Because the study goes on to report two related findings: organizations that do plan differ from those that don't in that they are 1) more likely to recognize failure, and 2) more likely to have other organizational departments engaged in communications efforts. These two things alone make planning worth it, whether we consult those plans on a daily basis or not.

Ok, so there are actually more than just four things that got stuck in my mental craw - which is in its own sense a measure of a report's success. But since we are all so short on actual time to read, (some might say poverty-stricken in this "attention economy" :), I will leave you with just one more finding that both delighted and intrigued me. It made me think of every blog post, discussion board message, and piece of strategic advice I have read over the last ten years encouraging nonprofits to behave more like businesses.

"There is another finding that seems to demand more research: Those with written communications plans most frequently said that before joining the foundation they had previously worked in a nonprofit organization, whereas those without written communications plans most frequently said they had worked in a for-profit company."

Thanks to Communications Network for cultivating discussion and debate on all these topics.

IssueLab Likes LikeMinded - A Lot!

Exciting news! The Craigslist Foundation has launched a new website aimed at helping community activists share stories of success, failure, and best practice, and IssueLab's collection of nonprofit knowledge is an integral part of it!

The site, LikeMinded -- an online tool for offline action, officially launched today. The site focuses your attention first on broad social policy issues -- Arts, Health, Education, Crime & Safety, Environment, Economy, Government, Community. However, in just a click you find yourself dealing with social policy on the ground -- local stories, unique perspectives, and supporting resources.

Speaking of resources....chances are very good that you will find an IssueLab-hosted research report under every LikeMinded category. This IssueLab/LikeMinded data partnership is just one example of how IssueLab makes the findings and analysis of the nonprofit sector discoverable and accessible to those who seek it.

So when you get a chance, give LikeMinded a look-see. Post a story, read a story, get a new/expanded/different perspective on activism and community.

And a special note to IssueLab Research Contributors: Sharing just one or two reports through IssueLab and yet you have dozens more reports that you could share? Consider this your motivational blog post! Add more/all of your sought-after research, and let us help you get it in front of the people who can use it!

Nonprofit Blog Carnival: Openness in the Third Sector

The diversity of submissions to this month's carnival speaks to how truly relevant the cultural and rhetorical move towards "openness" is to the work of nonprofits.

The demand for openness is affecting nonprofits in almost every dimension of our work, including: fundraising, research, marketing/communications, operations, evaluations, and outcomes. But we have a long way to go before openness in our practices and approaches could be considered the norm.

Each of the posts in this month's carnival makes its own argument for why nonprofits not only have to accept this cultural shift but also why its to our real benefit to do so. Here are some choice quotes from this month's submissions:

"Ultimately real dedication to openness means to publish every piece of relevant data in a searchable format for the world to look at, to search and to analyze." Good Developments

"“How open do I need to be?” … It seems fairly obvious to those of us steeped in the world of social technologies — you just are open, authentic, and transparent. But for many people where Facebook and Twitter represent alien planets fraught with danger, this is a very valid question. - Charlene Li

"The social media policy for one organization may not be appropriate to your association. Your policy should to be tailored to address your exposures and needs." - Social Fish

"Openness is a broad concept. It implies being truthful and honest in what you say, communicating information freely to stakeholders, and being held accountable to those you serve. It touches on much more than just your communication strategy, extending to how you run your programs and what sort of governance mechanisms you have." - WiserEarth

Nonprofits are doing everything from circulating open RFPs for potential merger partners to applying creative commons licenses to all of their research. What are you doing? Let us know in the comments!

Opening Up: Nonprofit Transparency
Kerry Vineberg from WiserEarth brings us this awesome big-picture look at the question of openness, while providing valuable advice on the small and practical steps your nonprofit can take to be more open.

Wikileaks and Its Consequences for Openness of Nonprofits
To put this all in a bigger cultural context the good folks at Good Developments bring a nonprofit perspective to the wikileaks phenomenon. Would your organization survive having all of its data published?

Nonprofits and Information: Sharing Our Stories
The Edmonton Social Planning Council talks about why stories are worth sharing and how several nonprofits (including IssueLab) are working to share as much and as often as possible.

Science of Giving 6: The donation box-How do social norms, price & scrutiny affect what people do?
Katya Andresen puts her spin on the benefits of openness, looking at how being open about the donations you receive might affect future gifts.

Successful fundraising is not for the thin-skinned
And right after you open up about your donations you may need Pamela Grow's advice on how to manage feedback from donors. Make sure to check out the comments on this post for some real-world insight about openness in fundraising.

True Tales of a Department of Education Grant Reviewer
For an example of a process that is integral to our work in the sector but unfortunately almost completely lacks openness, Jake Seliger shares a post from an anonymous reader about grant reviewing.

Foundations Fail at Failing
Speaking of foundations, Michael Remaley's recent post about foundations' openness about failures and lessons learned challenges grantmakers to start walking the talk on the kind of openness we used to call transparency. Be sure to check out the comments

How to use to Social Media without getting Panned
Maureen Carruthers brings us some great tips on how to be open and authentic in social media, without the dreaded over-sharing.

Peering Behind the Curtain of Advocacy Email Campaigns

Rob Pierson from BeaconFire gives us valuable insight into how being more open in our email campaigns might actually help address legislators' fears that emails aren't authentic, making our campaigns that more effective and meaningful.

Risk Management and Open Community: More Similar than You Think
Social Fish gives us some insight on how to manage the risks associated with creating open communities.

How open are you? Conduct an Openness Audit to Find Out
And finally, now that you've read all these other posts make sure to check out this interesting approach to understanding exactly how open your organization really is. Charlene Li, get ready for this -- shares -- her Openness Audit tool.

Thanks to everyone who shared a post with me. Although not all of them fit the topic closely enough to be included I read and appreciated each one.

Sandra Sims has just posted the February Nonprofit Blog Carnival's call for submissions. It is up at Mission Connected and is titled, Submit Your Blog Posts About Nonprofit Jobs to the February Nonprofit Blog Carnival. Check it out!

(Picture generously shared under a CC BY 2.0 license by Monica's Dad)

Set That File Free

We handle a lot of PDF files at IssueLab. We save 'em, duplicate 'em, convert ‘em into other formats for various purposes (eg., Scribd), copy text out of 'em, and generally hype ‘em when they contain nonprofit-produced research! So yeah, PDFs are sort of a 24-7 thing in this neck of the ‘net.

So, you can imagine our frustration (and confusion) when we receive PDFs that are "locked". If someone has produced a research report, saved it as a PDF, and put it on the World Wide Web presumably to share it broadly, why then render it all but useless by locking people out of printing it or copying text out of it (to name just two things one can do to a PDF via document security options)?

Before you “secure” your PDF-bound research report against being printed or having text copied out of it, we beseech you to think again. By locking your document you effectively relegate it to on-screen reading only. What if a reader wants to quote something from your report in their own work or presentation? Most readers don't have the time to re-key text that could so easily be copy/pasted from one document to another. What if they want to print something out to read rather than reading it on their computer screen or maybe they want to print it out to share it with someone who doesn't have ready access to a computer? A locked document prevents both these things from happening.

So please, before you “secure” your PDF against being used, and useful, return to the impulse that led you to place your file on the internet in the first place: sharing. Set that file free by making sure your security settings aren't keeping your work from being read or shared.

Image graciously provided under a cc license

Nonprofit Blog Carnival: Call for Posts on Openness

This month IssueLab will be playing host to the Nonprofit Blog Carnival, a long-running monthly series which collects blog posts on topics relevant to the sector.

As this month's host we are calling for blog posts that address the issue of openness in nonprofit communications! If you're anything like me you have attended more than your share of conference sessions that speak to the necessity of dialogue and openness in effective online communications. But what does that mean? What does it look like? How do we get our organizations to loosen up about brand management and start engaging in the kind of online dialogue that builds awareness online?

There's really no rule on what posts should look like. Essentially, we're looking for any advice, experience, tips, anecdotes, stories or examples of how nonprofits have opened up! Bloggers can submit their posts by emailing the permalink to nonprofitcarnival@gmail.com by Thursday, January 27th. You're also welcome to send in articles written in the past. We look forward to your insights and stories!

IssueLab Switches to Scribd: Good for us, good for you!

IssueLab is now using Scribd to provide site visitors, contributing organizations, and data partners with real-time dynamic views of the research documents we archive.

Our decision to switch away from Issuu to Scribd, “the largest social publishing and reading site in the world,” was based on a number of considerations including:

• Scribd's application programming interface (API) enables us to more easily work with our documents.
  
  
• Scribd makes access statistics available via their API so that we can now provide our contributors with this important metric.
  
  
• Scribd is actively working to move their entire document sharing platform away from proprietary Adobe Flash to open-source HTML 5. This means IssueLab users will soon be able to access documents on their mobile phones and other devices.
  
  
• Bonus: Scribd provides all of its services for free.

We completed the transition to Scribd last week. Users will experience no change to our document contribution or access work-flow. As well, contributors can still easily embed a dynamic view of their documents anywhere they like on the web -- embed code is available in the “Edit Listings” area of Research Contributor accounts.

Scribd’s vision: “to liberate the written word, to connect people and organizations with the information and ideas that matter most to them.” We couldn’t agree more!

Walking the Talk of Collaboration

When we ask nonprofits to contribute their research to IssueLab we talk a lot about the importance of knowledge sharing and the necessity of collaboration. We remind them (you) that in order to avoid recreating the wheel we simply have to share what we know with our colleagues in the field. Given the importance of our work and the scarcity of resources we can't financially or ethically afford to duplicate efforts. In essence by sharing our knowledge we build our capacity as individual organizations and as a sector.

But knowledge sharing requires more than just nonprofits sharing research with information hubs like IssueLab. It also requires that in turn IssueLab shares those resources and that research with other hubs, platforms, and online communities -- getting it into as many relevant online places and spaces as possible. In other words, walking the talk of collaboration.

One of the areas where nonprofits are constantly developing new strategies and looking for more efficient and effective approaches is in the area of volunteering. How can I best recruit volunteers? Do I need to manage online volunteers differently? How can I tap into the number of retiring baby boomers who are looking for meaningful volunteer opportunities? How can I best measure the value of volunteer contributions? Well matched and well managed volunteers directly contribute to an organization's capacity to deliver its services. And by extension when we share case studies, white papers, evaluations, and operational templates about volunteering we also build our capacity as a sector.

So forgive the long lead up -- but all of this explains why we are so excited to be collaborating with VolunteerMatch and IdeaEncore on making these resources more readily accessible to nonprofit practitioners. In partnership with IdeaEncore we are now sharing all research that addresses the topic of volunteering through the new Volunteering Resource Library. This library is directly available to the more than 73,000 nonprofits who use VolunteerMatch and are already looking to improve the way they recruit and manage volunteers.

There is a lot of talk about collaboration in the sector, from merging back office operations to developing joint programming but not a lot of this talk focuses on one of the most simple yet critical acts of collaboration -- knowledge sharing. The Volunteering Resource Library is a simple example of how much more we can do when we do it together.

Valuable nonprofit knowledge + a willingness to share = increased capacity.

If you know something about volunteering or you are looking for information about how to improve your volunteer program, plug yourself into this simple equation. We did!

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/quinnanya/111201180/ CC licensed: Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

WiserEarth Members Get Wise to IssueLab's Research Collection

Exciting news! Starting today, WiserEarth begins carrying research titles from IssueLab's collection! Any IssueLab listing carrying a 2007 or later publication date and related to social justice and the environment will now automatically become available to WiserEarth's members and site visitors on a weekly basis.

WiserEarth's mission is "to help the global movement of people and organizations working toward social justice, indigenous rights, and environmental stewardship connect, collaborate, share knowledge, and build alliances in order to address and solve the world’s problems." WiserEarth's community includes over 40,000 members around the globe and a plethora of groups where members can engage in discussion, post and share resources, and collaborate on projects. The WiserEarth directory is the world’s largest international directory of nonprofits and socially responsible organizations (110,000 in 243 countries). Of interest to our gentle-readers, WiserEarth boasts a taxonomy that is the "world’s most detailed classification of issue areas related to social justice and environmental restoration". Love it.

We view this partnership as a terrific opportunity to: 1) introduce activists and advocates to effective nonprofit organizations and research resources; 2) forge new, vibrant collaborations; and, ultimately, 3) create new knowledge that gets us all closer to a more just and peaceful global society. I know - it's a win-win-win!

We're confident that WiserEarth's community – individuals who care deeply about the state of the natural and social world, and who actively participate in social change through collaboration, knowledge sharing, and deepening their own understanding of the issues – will surely benefit from having immediate access to the research and analysis shared through IssueLab. We are very excited to share our collection with WiserEarth and all of its members.

And ... an important note of gratitude: Luise Barnikel, a former and much missed IssueLab team-member, started conversations with WiserEarth in early 2010 and pursued this collaboration for many months. Truly, without Luise this whole partnership may never have happened. Thank you Luise for your tireless work on this project!

Happy collaborating!

Guest Post: Five Steps to Translate Your Research Reports into English

Today's post is from Susan Parker's Clear Thinking eZine. It's a great publication about reading, writing and communicating research - you can subscribe for free here.

Five Steps to Translate Your Research Reports into English

Word count: 908

Estimated read time: Less than 4 minutes

When I was in graduate school, I had a very proper British professor who had brilliant insights about the role of women in society. I believed that her ideas mattered and needed to be heard beyond our classroom and the obscure academic publications that she wrote for.

One day after class, I beseeched her to write in a way that would reach more people. I told her that I would help--and that my goal was to get her featured in a popular magazine. She looked bewildered at my suggestion. And she never took me up on it.

While I did not succeed with her, I have "translated" scores of evaluation and research reports into clear English--and I am convinced that there is a rich supply of groundbreaking reports and important evaluation results that many people can benefit from. But this information is often buried in dense, jargon-laden language. As a result, the work does not make the impact that it might.

Foundations and other nonprofits spend millions of dollars each year commissioning research and evaluation projects that may end up on a shelf and read by no more than a few people. One reason these reports do not make an impact is that they are just too hard to get through. We have to make this important work inviting for people to read and learn about.

Here are a few things I have learned that can help you reach a wider audience and disseminate your valuable information:

1. Determine the key audience that you want to reach. It is one of the most important first steps. Don't say the "general public" or even "policymakers." That's too vague. You need to have a clear picture of the key people you really want to read this report. You also need to understand why they would care about what your research says. It's helpful if you can picture one person as you revise this report.

For example, your audience could be a three-term state legislator in California who serves on an education committee. He's heard about the childhood obesity epidemic, but he has not thought much about the connection between healthy students and positive educational outcomes. Your report provides timely data that makes the case that students who are obese or come to school with chronic illnesses do not achieve as well as healthy students do. That's the information that the legislator needs to help convince him to start considering health issues in his policy work.

It is critical to have a particular person in mind as you revise the report. By getting that specific about your audience, ironically, you will reach a much larger group.

2. Get the context. Most research and evaluation reports don't provide readers with enough context to make sense of the findings. You will likely need to add context to the report to make it relevant to the audience that you want to reach.

In a blog post, Jim Canales, president of the James Irvine Foundation, wrote that Irvine's board members spoke of how important contextual information was in making sense of the information that the foundation shared with them.

You may be able to get the context through the research or evaluation proposal. Or you may need to do a little more research.

3. Read the report with the audience in mind and see what jumps out at you. What strikes you? What seems new? What's confusing? Make a note of it. Because you are not steeped in the subject yourself, you have a perspective on what could be truly interesting.

4. Talk to the person who wrote the report. This is imperative. The evaluator or researcher often writes for a particular purpose and narrow audience (sometimes just a program officer at a foundation). Because of this, she won't necessarily include some of the details that might be useful to the people you are trying to reach.

Ask the researcher for her three major findings. Most researchers and evaluators write in the muddy middle, that is, they don't take a step back and report their overarching findings or themes. If the researcher is the least bit unclear, keep asking follow up questions.

These conversations are fun to have. People are often clearer about their work when they just chat about it then when they write about it. And this is work they are passionate about. That passion will come out and you can convey that in the revised report.

5. Find a story to tell. It may be buried in the report or mentioned tangentially. Stories bring flesh and blood to findings. Find a story or example that illustrates each of the top three findings. These stories do not have to be long, but they need to paint a picture that accurately illustrates the key findings.

For example, if a research report talks about the importance of schools working with their communities to achieve better health outcomes for students, find an example of a specific school working with its community to lower smog levels.

Try some of these ideas and, unlike my graduate school professor, the insights in your research and evaluation reports will reach the large audience it deserves.

By Susan Parker of Clear Thinking Communications.

Please visit Clear Thinking Communication's web site at www.clearthinkingcommunications.com for additional tips on communications for foundations, nonprofits and progressive businesses.

Our KM Toolbox and Social Source Commons

This is a cross-post from the Social Source Commons Blog, where Matt Garcia recently wrote about IssueLab and Knowledge Mobilization.

In case you haven't yet, check out Social Source Commons. It's a great resource and:

"a place to share lists of software tools that you already use, gain knowledge and support, and discover new tools. It’s a place to meet people with similar needs and interests and answer the question: what tools do they use?"

IssueLab recently used Social Source Commons to compile a set of tools that are helpful for Knowledge Mobilization. This includes many free online tools that our staff uses for both internal (collaboration) and external (dissemination) purposes. Matt writes that,

"I thought this was an interesting toolbox in that many organizations, nonprofit and otherwise are constantly combing the internet in some kind of fashion for information and data related to their work. Each has its own technique of capturing relevant information and sites. Whether it is using Delicious bookmarks or covering a wall in Post-It notes, it's valuable and important to take a step back to see how your organization is collecting and storing data and resources that are organizationally relevant."

Continue reading the entire post and check out our KM Toolbox here!

Three New Widgets & Three Reasons to Grab One

Do you blog about nonprofits or education? Is one of your goals to educate a website audience about social issues? Then I know you'll find value in IssueLab's new Widgets...because we created them just for you!

The Widgets bring fresh social and policy research directly to your readers, all within your own online environment. Each resource in our archive is manually approved, making sure we share only quality work created by nonprofits, foundations and academic centers.

Creating these tools is part of IssueLab's ongoing commitment to promote and disseminate nonprofit-produced research to a broader audience - and you can take an active part by embedding one for your audience. Why?

1. For you: It's a simple way to offer relevant, vetted, and up-to-date content.

2. For your audience: It's free and easy access to quality research by and about nonprofit issues.

3. For nonprofits everywhere: It's an effective way to bring their knowledge to a broader audience that relies on it for policymaking, direct service, grantmaking, advocacy and more.

What are you waiting for? Grab one today!

And don't forget to let us know what you think in the comments below.

You Learn Something New Every Day

I love the cliche, "You learn something new every day". I love the implication that there's more to learn in this world than we can ever grasp. If the concept of a limitless body of knowledge is as exciting to you as it is to me, you're on the right blog.
In my job as Collections Assistant here at IssueLab, my learning is less haphazard than most--I'm often actively looking for new organizations and research that will fit into our next CloseUp collection. I'm lucky enough to learn LOTS of new things every day. Right now I'm working on finding research on aging out of foster care, and this is definitely one of those topics that is chockfull of startling, interesting, and occasionally enraging new information and statistics. I decided to keep track of some of the new things I've learned today.
Without further ado, here is the list of just a few new things I learned today:

• The term permanency is pervasive in research on foster care, followed in frequency by kinship care
• There is a nationwide, comprehensive data collection project that will start in October, 2010. The National Youth in Transition Database will allow for more thorough, longitudinal tracking.
  
• The racial distribution of youth in foster care is fairly disproportionate, with African-American youth often comprising over 50%, but this varies from state-to-state (not surprisingly)
  
• As of mid-decade, about a quarter of youth in Foster Care were living with relatives.
  
• There are some programs that provide funding for recent Foster Care graduates in supervised living facilities--but does this include college dorms?
  
• Since there are a number of different residential possibilities for foster care youth, especially teens, face a wide range of changes and challenges upon aging out. Many are not coming from a temporary family situation.

For more facts, details, and reports from which some of these tidbits were drawn, visit IssueLab starting in April to see our full Aging Out of Foster Care CloseUp!

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pfv/2739621207/ CC licensed: Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic

And The Winner Is...

IssueLab is pleased to announce the winner of the Research Remix video contest!

Contestants were asked to remix facts or data from one of over 300 openly licensed research reports on the IssueLab website into a video. At launch for Open Access Week 2009 and throughout the submission deadline, the contest generated lots of buzz and interest from nonprofit and video communities alike.

Our congratulations go to Erin Costello and her video remix "Girls Risk High Morals: Online," featuring research by the MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Initiative. Judge Allison Fine (Senior Fellow at Demos) notes that "the video creators have combined riveting visual images with a dramatic narrative to forcefully impact the viewer on the dangers of the online world for girls."

Learn more about the Research Remix video contest and read the original research here.

Thank you to Research Remix participants for sharing their creative interpretation of research on pressing social issues. The video is available under a Creative Commons license, open for use and remixing (for noncommercial purposes) by anyone!

Additional thanks go to the panel of judges, to Creative Commons and the Public Library of Science, as well as the many promoters and supporters that spread the word about this unique opportunity giving voice to nonprofit research.

P.S.: There are still many more contest packages with t-shirts to give away, so we encourage any additional submissions to the Vimeo Research Remix channel! If you've got remixed media and can incorporate openly licensed nonprofit research, share your art and views with everyone!

Online Outreach on a Budget - January Nonprofit Blog Carnival

This month we spent some time collecting posts about nonprofit communications on a budget. Below you'll find a combination of great resources that were submitted, and information I've found useful in my own research on online outreach. So bookmark this post and take the time to apply this knowledge to marketing and communications at your organization - it's cheap (or free) and has worked for others!

Webinar Recap: Connecting Advocacy to Fundraising

Thanks very much to Care2 and their presenters for sharing this webinar recording. Check out the slides for great case studies for online campaigns that work, as well as solid tips to building an advocacy program (and it can be done on a budget!!).

DIY strategic communications planning for nonprofits: Step 2—Key Audiences

Gayle of IMPACTMAX says that, "by the end of this exercise, you’ll have a list of most important categories of people who can advance your change agenda." A little planning goes a long way.

Guest Blog: Justine Yu on Social Media for Nonprofits

This post has great examples of how Journalists for Human Rights (where Justine is an intern) uses social media and creates online campaigns. She writes, "start a campaign that’ll give all of your supporters (regardless of age, profession, or location) a chance to actively engage in the process of whatever it is your organization is striving towards."

Presentation - Integrating Direct Mail & Online Marketing to Engage Constituents & Raise Funds

Already doing direct mail? Ignitus Strategies shares this great presentation for how to integrate mailings with free online techniques for reaching out to your fundraising audience.

6 Benefits of Using Twitter for Nonprofit

This guest post comes straight from a nonprofit think tank to Pamela's Grantwriting Blog. If "our limited communications budget means that we can’t pay a PR firm" sounds familiar, read this post. Especially if your organization produces research.

How to Engage Your Blog's Community

Blogs are one of the major (free) ways to communicate with constituents online. In his 31 Day Challenge, John Haydon gives some great tips on how to engage casual readers in real conversation.

API - Tweetatcongress.com

Thanks to @noah_cooper for this great free tool. Integrate it into your website to "give users a way to look up and tweet at their legislators." Neat idea!

Nonprofits e-mail free!

In this overview of free e-mail services, Maureen Carruthers from the Low Hanging Fruit blog explains "the free part." Besides, if your nonprofit holds events, she's got a sweet post about Nathan Fillion's style of promoting events on Twitter.

Q&A: PETA's "Gorilla" Marketing Tactics

With a quick free registration, you'll be able to read this interesting MarketingProfs interview with a PETA Marketing Manager on how this organization uses social media and word-of-mouth initiatives (already in 2007!).

Worksheet - The Online Fundraiser's Checklist
"Check the boxes on these six worksheets and if you don't score well, use the helpful (and free!) resources listed on the bottom of each page to improve your online fundraising practices."

Coming up: The February Carnival will be hosted by Katya Andresen at the Nonprofit Marketing Blog. The theme will be your best and/or worst moments as a nonprofit professional – and what you learned from them. Submit posts here.

"Pennies" image credit goes to Pdphoto.org - thanks!

Research Summary: Addressing the Needs of Female Professional and Amateur Athletes

Addressing the Needs of Female Professional and Amateur Athletes
Women's Sports Foundation


I expected this report, which presents focus group results from 1999, to primarily center on unequal pay and facilities. Although the report included this information I was much more interested by the unexpected focus on communications, representation and promotional issues faced by female athletes.

It is hard not to wonder how many female athletes are still facing challenges in these same areas. Although this report was written a decade ago and important deep lasting attitudinal changes have certainly been made by women in sports, it describes some of the more insidious ways that female athletes have been held back in their professional pursuits, forms of sexism that by their very subtlety sometimes escape open analysis and criticism. I encourage you to read about some of the challenges these athletes experience in regards to communications, representation, and promotion and let us know if you think things have changed or mostly remained the same.

Communication issues include getting late notice on training camps or events, which results in many women having trouble accommodating these schedules with the one (or two, or more) jobs they have to maintain to pay for training. There are also problems with coaches, who many women feel don't listen adequately.

Representation issues manifest in a few different ways. National governing boards must be comprised of at least 20% athletes. Though this is followed, most athletes don't feel their needs are actually represented by those athletes on boards. A broader criticism was the lack of women athletes administrating on governing boards or in other visible positions. Lastly, though finding agents has become easier for women athletes, especially soccer and basketball players, it still remains far more difficult than for male athletes.

Promotion presents problems since the media coverage is imperative to a sports popularity today. Athletes felt their sports and games weren't promoted well. Furthermore, when promotion does happen, it sometimes plays on the sexualization of these women. When they express resistance to wearing unnecessarily skimpy outfits or being exploited as sexual objects, they are met with indifference and hostility (which ties into communication and representation issues).

From a design and organization perspective, this 16 page report starts with an executive summary and has graphs throughout. I really appreciated the bold, concise titles and subtitles. By clearly labeling and keeping each section brief, readers can easily skim and find the issues most relevant to them. This may seem obvious, but you'd be surprised how few reports are well-marked internally.

What do you think? Are these obstacles still alive and well?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomsaint/ / CC BY 2.0

Call for the Nonprofit Blog Carnival: Posts About Online Outreach on a Budget

This month, IssueLab is glad to host the Nonprofit Blog Carnival! As we move into this new year with many challenges, we want to provide nonprofit communicators with ideas on doing online outreach on a budget. This means thrifty, effective Internet marketing and advocacy without big spend or big PR firms.

There's really no rule on what posts should look like. Essentially, we're looking for any advice, experience, tips, anecdotes, stories or examples of how nonprofits can do more with less. Topics might include how you find and reach constituents online, how your organization uses social media and networks to share research and knowledge, or a case study for an activism or dissemination campaign that was done on a small budget.

Bloggers can submit their posts by emailing the permalink to nonprofitcarnival@gmail.com, or by using the Blog Carnival submission form by Thursday, January 28th. You're also welcome to send in articles written in the past. We look forward to your tips!

What We Don't Find When We Search

Last Sunday the New York Times ran an interesting op-ed on the subject of search neutrality, the principle that search engine results should be "comprehensive, impartial and based solely on relevance", rather than on any particular editorial policy (or commercial incentives).

Given our reliance on search engines as the standard first step in seeking and filtering information you'd think search neutrality would be a bigger topic of discussion. But aside from periodic grumblings and misgivings about how Google has aided and abetted political censorship in China, we don't spend a whole lot of time talking about other ways that search engines exclude, censor, or bias our searches for information.

Of course online researchers like Mary Ellen Bates, educators who are trying to get their students to do more than just cite Wikipedia, and frankly the whole field of search engine marketing talk about this subject plenty. But the topic isn't one that is picked up on very often by nonprofits who have a unique stake in search neutrality or by most individuals who simply use search engines to find basic information.

Maybe this is just one of those topics we don't want to have to think or talk about, something we would rather believe just takes care of itself. Kind of like we prefer to believe that people have equal access to the polls, that town hall meetings are "open", or that anyone can get a letter to the editor published. Ugggh, can't we just assume it's being taken care of? Well, as Adam Raff's op-ed reminds us, no we can't.

Because Raff's op-ed focuses largely on Google, let me come clean right away. IssueLab has a pretty longstanding love affair with Google. We use Google apps to collaborate, Google mail to communicate, and Google maps to navigate research on IssueLab. We are grateful for a Google grant that allows us to leverage AdWords and we even publish our quarterly board reports using a Google site. Yet at the same time when we explain what IssueLab does we often start by explaining what Google doesn't do. We spend a lot of our time finding and sharing hard to find research because we know that it isn't coming up in Google search results. We explain how Google's algorithms, bless their little binary hearts, sometimes privilege the largest and most popular nonprofits by including link popularity in the ranking of search results. I am not saying this isn't a relevant measure but it's worth our while to ask whether it's a neutral measure and to question what all goes into link popularity itself, such as organizational resources and brand awareness. (Despite the number of online contests that give prizes to those nonprofits who can garner the most votes, popularity is not an accurate measure of an organization's impact or for that matter the quality or relevance of its research.)

But link popularity is just one example of potential bias in search results and Google is only one online space for us to consider and challenge. As nonprofits it's worth our time to think about other ways that our knowledge or the information we want to share might get left out of search engine results and other data mining projects. Is our knowledge and information tagged with the kinds of metadata that make it "ready" for inclusion? Is our research licensed in ways that allow it to be included in the growing number of search functions that return only openly licensed content? In what other ways might information from smaller nonprofits or information on more marginalized subject areas get excluded?

These may all be examples of what my friend and colleague Anne Elizabeth Moore calls accidental censorship, when information is disappeared almost without intention because of how fields of information or knowledge are organized and how access to that information is institutionalized. (Just in case you wanted something else to keep you up at night ;) We can have debates about exactly how "accidental" this kind of censorship is, but in the end, search neutrality will depend on some kind of intentional intervention by those of us who know that search results do not adequately represent all the information that is out there. They are a good start but they are simply not neutral.

Maybe the solution is something along the lines of the kind of legislation Raff calls for, maybe it's about making sure our information is more "ready" to be included and accessed, or maybe it's about making the extra effort to complement search engines with other kinds of information filters such as relying on our peers and trusted librarians. Whatever the solution is, I guess I just want to make sure that we at least take the time to recognize and discuss the problem.

"Google coupon" image:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bramus/ / CC BY 2.0

Geotagtastic Subcategoodness!

We are very excited to share a couple of new ways to view our collection, each adding a new perspective on nonprofit research. We're all big-picture-meets-devil-in-the-details over here, and a whole new meta-take on nonprofit produced research is aloft!

Subcategories - Our Research Contributors have been busy creating a tres unique tag cloud for all of us research wonks. In addition to cross-referencing research in up to three issue areas, subcats let our contributors interrelate research on a much more descriptive and nuanced level. An example: browse the subcat "at-risk youth" and you'll find listings under Children and Youth, Crime and Safety, Education and Literacy, Employment and Labor, Health and Medicine, Nonprofits and Philanthropy, and Religion. Pretty cool, no?

Access subcat information by visiting our new "Browse by Subcategory" option. As well, clickable subcats now appear on any listing page that has been subcategorized. Look for these cute little subcats in the "Related Research" area on the right-side of research listing pages.

Coverage - You can now take a look at our listings from about a gazillion feet up -- literally if you like. Approximately 1,000 research listings in IssueLab's archive now include information about the geographic area covered by the research in question. Our coverage data runs the gamut from continents to neighborhoods/points-of-interest. Two ways to get geo with IssueLab:

1) Any listing that includes coverage information now includes a Google map and clickable list of locations. Click on a location and get a drill-down view of listings with similar geographic info. Or,

2) Visit our new "Browse by Coverage" option and take a trip to your favorite locale via our clickable list of geo points.

Enjoy!

Common(s) Sense for Communications Staff

Would you password your website? Or make twitter updates private? How about hiding your facebook fan page so it doesn't appear in search results? That wouldn't make much sense. Neither does using restrictive copyrights for work you produce to further your nonprofit mission. Yet, a majority of the third sector still has difficulties using Creative Commons.

Is it because we're unfamiliar with the options? Are nonprofits worried about how their writing and research might be used by others? Beth Kanter is an avid supporter of Creative Commons (another reason to jump on the bandwagon!) and this post includes great resources, articles, and remixes that make a strong case for open licensing in the nonprofit framework.

For foundations, the choice may be a bit more difficult. As this Berkman Center for Internet and Society report notes, foundations don't usually apply open licenses to funded work (with a few notable exceptions!), since it's often produced by consultants or grantee organizations. Still, blogger and philanthropy consultant Lucy Bernholz advocates for opening up foundation content and has some good ideas on information sharing and creation.

Here at IssueLab, we're big supporters of open licensing. Whether you work for an advocacy or direct service organization, a research institute or a foundation – here is why you should start thinking about using Creative Commons (CC):

1. Increase your exposure – Share and share alike. It's a simple concept and can work wonders for your visibility online. When readers know your research (photos, website, video, etc.) carries a CC license, they know it's ok to share your work. The rules are clear, and your constituents don't have to ask for permission when they want to use your ideas, which is a huge deterrent for online sharing. Remember: the more you share with others, the more they'll use, quote, recommend, share, and reference in turn.

2. Sustain impact of your work – There are many reasons why restrictive copyrights stunt the potential impact of your work. Open licenses = open access, and this means you can be in more spaces online for the life of your organization and beyond. Publishing a report is not the end of the line; your CC-licensed work can continue to circulate and inform audiences independently of your active outreach and organizational capacity.

3. Expand innovation in your field – Depending on the CC license you choose, your audience has the opportunity to be really creative with your ideas. One of the main goals of nonprofit research, after all, is to evaluate what works and to build upon lessons learned. This is how we find practical solutions and spur social innovation. Applying an open license to your work can encourage people to repurpose or remix information into ideas, programs, events, data or campaigns that have never before existed. Imagine the possibilities!

4. Get credit – Don't we all like to get credit for our content and ideas? Creative Commons makes it easy (yes, easier than the old standard copyright) to receive proper and specific attribution for work you share. Contrary to what you may have heard, an open license like Creative Commons doesn't just make your content a "free for all," but actually requires users to credit and cite you explicitly in a manner of your choosing. The CC-image used in this blog post? Check out the citation at the bottom - it's a simple copy & paste from the "some rights reserved" link on the flickr photo page. Easy!

Not convinced yet? Agree completely? No time for licensing issues? I'd love to hear your comments!

"Common Sense" image:

simone_brunozzi / CC BY-SA 2.0

What Makes Nonprofits Laugh?

Ok, I'll admit it. I spend a lot of time, probably too much time, thinking and talking about the subject of identity. Not just any identity but specifically the group identity of the nonprofit sector. I admit it, it's a bit niche, but so is this blog. So I figure I am in safe company bringing it up. Actually I am hoping that I might even get an answer to my latest question on this topic.

The fact is I am not alone when it comes to this obsession with "nonprofitness". For a taste of just how big this question is and how active the discussion around it is you can just look at the comments elicited by Tony Wang's blog post "Where is Philanthropy's Community" from a few months ago . Or for that matter check out the 10+ years of discussion on Charity Channel's listservs for an incredible glimpse into how the nonprofit group identity has been developed and negotiated over time. There is of course no shortage of interesting writing (both academic and practitioner based) being done on this subject. When I can carve out some time in the near future I will definitely post a bibliography on the topic!

But this off-hours obsession isn't just a hobby, it also directly informs our work here at IssueLab. In many ways we are trying to walk a fine line between wanting to cross-pollinate niche communities within the sector (which most often attach to either issue areas or professional roles) and recognizing that people primarily use our site to find research on a particular topic. I have talked about the interdisciplinary nature of our work on this blog before and regularly talk to folks in trainings and presentations about how the lack of a single "water cooler" for the sector affects our strategies for knowledge sharing. And for the most part I encourage people to accept this reality while still trying to get the folks who work on housing issues to read my emails about art education.

So last night I started to wonder about the role of humor in all of this. Because, honestly I was thinking about what a nonprofit version of the Onion might look like. "Nonprofit Logic Model Proves to be Illogical" "Beth Kanter Launches Print Newsletter"?

Is the fact that the sector doesn't have a resident satirist or that the Chronicle doesn't run a regular cartoon evidence that we take ourselves too seriously (and then blog about it no less)? Or are we simply concerned that other people won't take us seriously? Or is it more evidence that we don't really have a nonprofit group identity? I mean a joke really only works when it resonates with the common experience of the audience. When I first moved to Chicago I actually interviewed for a job with a labor cartoonist. That's right - all he did was cartoons about the labor movement and people ate it up! Could we even accomplish something like this for the nonprofit sector?

Maybe this is a question for the Nonprofit Congress or the Independent Sector but I am not sure they would add it to the agenda so I thought I would ask you instead. What would your Nonprofit Onion headline be? I know it's sort of silly but I kind of think it's worth thinking about and playing around with. Because after all, those NP Onion headlines might represent the places/spaces/topics where we come together, where we cross-pollinate ideas and experiences, and er um where we might even share knowledge.

Image provided under a CC license by

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonymadrid/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0