My campaign evaluation

For my campaign evaluation, I chose to look at an event held by my local public library in Bristol, Va (the Bristol Public Library), in which they hosted Buddy Valastro, better known as the “Cake Boss” from his TLC reality show to speak about his life and do a baking demonstration. It took place on Dec. 1, 2011, but was announced in February 2011, with tickets going on sale on April 1.  I wanted to look at this event because it seemed like a big deal for a small town and was not an event put on by the library partnered with another organization, but the library alone.

Though the library has hosted high-profile speakers and authors before, such as Chris Matthews, Soledad O’Brien, Nicholas Sparks, and David Baldacci, this event was unique in that unlike writers and journalists, a reality show baker does not have an intrinsic relationship to a library. Also, having little prior knowledge of Valastro or the Cake Boss  show  and not attending the event, but having a background knowledge about the library, its audience, and local media, I thought this was a campaign I could look at objectively and analyze what worked and what did not.

Mainly, I examined how the library used local media and social media to overcome the challenges of putting on such as large show. First, tickets were expensive ranging from $25- $100. Moreover, if the library did not sell enough of the more expensive tickets they would not get enough return on investment and it would look terrible at the event if there were a significant number of empty seats in the first 5 rows. However, the library used its established media partners and good relationships with journalists to promote the event and had great attendance and sales.

Some of the critques I have of the campaign are the uneven media coverage throughout the year, the lack of strategic use of social media (yes, they used it, but not with a focused strategy it seemed), and the lack of mention of certain parts of the campaign on social media, such as a press conference the day of the event in which Valastro was at the library.

The positives were the great attendance, the ability to tie in literacy and library objectives to the event, and the excellent coverage by local media.

What I really loved about doing this project was looking at the ways dfferent strategies come together to create a successful event. I was also glad I chose an event because I was able to mentally compare this with the event we put on about domestic violence, and ask similar questions of this campaign that I asked when evaluating our event.

It was also a good opportunity to look back at my past blog posts and pick out what I thought were important elements of the book and see how I could incorporate them into my evaluation.

In summary, I thought the Christmas with the Cake Boss event was well-organized and received great media coverage, but if they had used social media more strategically, they just might have gotten that sell-out crowd they were hoping for.

learning loops and fundraising

When I first read the title to Chapter 9, I was intrigued by “learning loops,” but just based on the initial example from the Humane Society, I was still a bit confused about what they were. For example, in the figure from the book (shown below,  courtesy of “Beth’s Blog”), do the zig zag dotted lines represent people’s behavior? And if so, is there a method to understanding the turns the lines make? I assumed there certainly was, but did not understand it initially.

As I continued reading, I realized the loops are all about measurement for the purposes of return on investment, but it is also about focused measurement. The text suggests to start small, such as just analyzing Twitter use or focusing on a specific group of reaI liked that they related this to blogs, which we haven’t touched on as much in the class yet. Blogs are a great tool for engagement, and also measureable. One can keep track of not only the number of subscribers, but the types and extent of engagement through comments. An organization can also evaluate its own ouput, in addition to outsiders’ involvement; for example, asking what topics posts discuss most and doing a detailed analysis of the posts that do receive the most feedback, looking at their style, tone, length, and other factors. These analyses, in addition to analyzing Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, are ultimately to see the return on investment and be able to track whether the overall goal, social change, is occuring.

I also wanted to talk about chapter 10, which discusses how to turn followers and friends into funding partners. I was looking at nonprofit fundraising efforts some as I was choosing my campaign evaluation, one of which being a public radio affiliate.  I saw many tips from ch. 10 that could have been incorporated to make that station’s a more successful campaign. First, I really liked the storytelling concept with fundraising. People really like something they can connect with personally and something that tugs at their heart strings. Also, I liked the idea of professing thankfulness. This is one way in which the radio station was really failing. People were writing on their Facebook wall saying “I just donated! You should too!” and other comments showing their contribution and there was NO response from the station. It just shows how un-engaged the station was with their Facebook, only having a one-way flow of communication in which they would post announcements about their fund drive, but not respond to their supporters.

The last thing I thought was important about this chapter was using the ease of the “click” on Facebook and Twitter for fundraising from another sponsor. This is absolutely a plus of using social media for fundraising. Think about how much more encouraged one would be to donate if all it meant is hitting a “like” button or tweeting something with a specific hashtag, and it is good publicity for the sponsor because social media advertising is lucrative and it displays the company’s corporate social responsibility to a mass audience. Overall, it seems like fundraising online is definitely the way of the future and beneficial for nonprofits.

Simplicity: cutting workload and costs

“Simplicity is more than an economic equation, more than a tactic for hard financial times. It is simply, a better way for social change organizations to accomplish more with fewer financial resources” –Kanter and Fine, p. 99.

The concept of simplicity is the basis of chapter 7 in The Networked Nonprofit. The authors explain that in the 20^th century it became easy for nonprofits, like other companies, to become very complex and layered with more bureaucracy and hierarchy. This just makes the task of nonprofits more complicated though. This desire for complexity goes back to something mentioned previously in the book–the need for control. But Kanter and Fine argue that it is this control that actually makes the entire organization inefficient.

Kanter and Fine suggest that social media can be a way that nonprofits simplify. This may seem confusing at first, because one may wonder how adding another facet of communication would make things simpler. First of all, social media provides a means of letting go of that control that can be so constricting to an organization.  

Here are some of the tips Fine and Kanter offer for simplifying:

• Controlling the information flow—there are various internet tools such as filters and organization tools that can reduce the amount of information you receive so you can focus on what is important.
• This also goes for friends/ followers on Facebook and Twitter as well. Assess who is important and who is not and this will make sure you are spending valuable time connecting with the right people, not wasting time reaching out to the wrong people.
• Find trusted bloggers that you always rely on and read (5-10 the authors suggest) instead of getting bogged down searching through lots of different blogs.

 I thought the twenty questions the authors offered for nonprofits  (p.100) to ask themselves also seemed like a great tool to determine how an organization can simplify workload.

I came across another blog that was discussing the current state of nonprofits in the recession and what should be cut and what should have more emphasis. What should be cut? Print budgets, traditional web hosting, and traditional marketing approaches. As you might guess, what SHOULD be emphasized: social media. This blogger says social media, particularly Twitter is his number one source of news about business, philanthropy, and fundraising information.

Also, related to the chart we looked at in class last week, here’s a list of charities and nonprofits and how they are using Twitter.  

 

Engaging, building relationships, and transparency

I thought Chapter 5 provided a lot of insight into practical uses for social media in relationship building between a nonprofit and its target audiences. The Planned Parenthood example was really interesting. As the text mentioned that organization has an issue with confidentiality, so it had been scared of opening up with social media, but through social media it was able to open conversation about touchy topics like sexually transmitted diseases.

It is also important to remember that part of this relationship is accepting criticism and using social media can be a tool for conversing with one’s critics.  I experienced this issue of dealing with criticism, and in that situation either mediating social media or letting things “run free” so to speak when interning with a non-profit publication this summer. We had published an article that stirred up some controversy, so when my editor posted our usual engagement questions such as, “What did you think about this month’s issue?” on our Facebook page, there were many responses that were not so pleasant.

My editor came to me directly and asked if I had expertise on social media etiquette and whether she should say something in response to all these comments or just be a “silent” mediator and let the comments go in their own direction. I could tell she wanted to reply something because she wrote the article and obviously wanted to defend our publication’s angle on the issue because she felt it was being misunderstood. I advised that it was fine to respond with a brief clarification of our position, because if we did not respond, it would look like we did not stand by the article we published or that we did not actually care about our FB page because we weren’t reading people’s responses.  I never knew if that was the correct response or not, but after reading chapter 5, I feel like it was. The authors describe that if you are not responding and engaging, you are in fact creating the barrier.

I also like the concept of Astroturfing the book mentions, which is a fake attempt to build relationships. The book says that often this happens when organizations have “shallow pockets” and want to generate support easily, but that pretending is the WORST thing you can do as a non-profit.

In Chapter 6, I learned a lot about what transparency is for a nonprofit and why it is important. The example of the Indianapolis Museum of Art showed that it can be beneficial to let one’s audiences know everything about their current situation. The negative elements of their situation actually gave them a platform to talk about those struggles to donors. Chapter 6 might provide some interesting information for us to use as we evalute campaigns and may take into account whether the nonprofit is transparent or a fortress and how that may have influenced the success or failure of their campaigns.

Navigating social networks and creating a social culture

The most interesting part of Chapter 3 of The Networked Nonprofit was the idea of mapping one’s social network. I had no idea there were actual tools to do this, but I also liked that the book focused on how one could do it without any high-tech tools. I liked the hypothetical example about the Kids’ Book Club because it showed not only how to make the map, but how it could be useful, by showing who may be missing in the map that would be a target audience. (In the hypothetical case it was parents and children themselves.) I found the boxes on pages 37 and 38 really helpful in further understanding how this mapping would work and different forms of network mapping.

Another interesting point in chapter 3 was what the text called the “counterintuitive notions” about social networks which were that 1) the people on the edge/ periphery of networks are important for social networking, not just the core of the organization, and that 2) networks are made up of both strong and loose ties, and utilizing both those ties is vital for being a networked nonprofit.  For example, when we invite friends to events on Facebook, or Tweet about an event to all our followers, we are not just using strong personal ties, we are using the loose ties as well. We do not just invite our best friends to the event, but we send the invite to people we once had a class with or someone who lived in our dorm freshman year.

To me, the whole idea of Twitter is about loose ties, rather than strong ties, or even no ties at all besides Twitter itself, though you certainly do have followers and people you follow who you have close personal relationships with. Only interacting with those people though, the way many use Facebook, defeats the purpose of Twitter. I engage with people whom I don’t know and will never meet through Twitter by, for instance, retweeting something from a prominent sports journalist who lives in New York or replying to something my favorite actor tweeted. These very loose connections could even be beneficial when trying to promote your nonprofit’s cause.

Chapter 4 is more about creating a social culture within a nonprofit, which may not be as relevant to us now as college students, but is very important to keep in mind as we go into our first jobs and are working with those who may have a fear of social media or simply not understand it. Some of the main issues organizations have are with information and how much/ how little to share. I thought this would probably be relevant to Safe Harbor because they are dealing with such a sensitive cause and what is often a very private issue, and as the authors say “organizations using social media automatically become more public.” For Safe Harbor, obviously they want their cause to be more public and openly discussed, which is great for social media, but also there is a line with what kind of approaches they take to do so and what information they share about their day to day work because that might be confidential.

I also thought the list of reasons on page 50 that employees might have a fear of social media was helpful. The authors also recognize that some of those fears are in fact true, but should not deter anyone from using social media.

The Networked Nonprofit

“Networked nonprofits don’t work harder or longer…they work differently” (3). Through this statement in Chapter 1, the authors of The Networked Nonprofit begin by dispelling the misconception that many nonprofits may have about utilizing social media—that it will be an increased burden on their already encumbered workload. 

One of the key elements to the networked nonprofit seems to be an organization’s relationship with “free agents,” which we have talked about in class some. They are important for expanded the nonprofits’ cause outside of just the nonprofit’s organizational social media resources. These bloggers, tweeters, and others with an online presence can do a lot of work for the organization by just being passionate about their cause and promoting it to others. Also, they mention that sometimes these free agents are young and inexperienced, but that does not mean they should necessarily be avoided. They may be able to reach audiences that an older, experienced blogger wouldn’t have connected with. Most of us as college students are relatively new to the blog scene, yet it is great that Safe Harbor is willing to use us as a tool. Some people may know about Safe Harbor just because a student in our class has tagged the organization in their blog and maybe someone has come across that blog when searching on Google. Also, when we Retweet Safe Harbor tweets on Twitter, one of our followers may be intrigued and look into the organization.

I also liked that the chapter did not deny that face-to-face interaction is still vital for a networked non-profit; just because so much is focused online these days, doesn’t mean face to face should be disregarded. I think about this in relation to our class’s effort for the Chick-Fil-A fundraiser. I sent a personal message on Facebook to about 25 people when I invited them to our event; however, I know many of those people probably did not attend the event, whereas my friends and neighbors that I told to go in-person all attended.

I found the reading interesting because as much as I thought I knew about social media, as an experienced user since my teen years, I had never used it for more than personal purposes before this class and never knew the correct social media lexicon in terms of networking. This dips a little into chapter three, but just from reading ahead I saw that every social network is made up of nodes and ties in “network speak,” and I had never heard those terms before, so I’m interested to read more about that for next week.

Spokespeople and Partnerships

This week I caught up on reading Chapters 9 and 10 which discuss the power of spokespeople and partnerships. Much of the advice about spokespeople is pretty straightforward, such as choosing people who have time availability and are comfortable speaking in a variety of situations and training them on how to appropriately communicate with media. I liked how the authors suggest that a good replacement for expensive media coaches is setting up mock situations, filming them with a video camera, and critiquing and making improvements through feedback sessions with the spokesperson. I also thought some of the specific tips were great, such as always answering questions in complete sentences and coming into the interview with several different ways of saying the same message so that the message can be repeated without sounding too repetitive. The section about choosing a spokesperson with a personal story stood out as something that related to our situation with Safe Harbor, and I started thinking about how hard it might be to “put a face on” the issue of domestic violence because it is so sensitive. I feel like Safe Harbor might have more luck with the suggestion of anonymity because many victims may not be comfortable speaking openly about their situations. Most of the interviews I saw on Youtube for non-profits dealing with domestic violence with were with the CEO or executive director of the organization.

Ch. 10 was interesting because in our group we are collaborating with several other organizations to put on our campus speaker event. The issue of internal communications has definitely become vital to us because we are all in constant email contact with so many organizations, and then forwarding that info. to everyone else in the group. We are currently going to send our press release to the organizations we are working with, which will help distribute a standard set of information about the event instead of worrying about what information about the event each group member is emailing to their contact in the partner organizations.  We expanded our spokespeople by adding a professional expert, the counselor from CUCares who will also be involved with our event. This way we are still working for our community organization, Safe Harbor, while adding an educational organization to supplement that. I also really enjoyed reading about the case study about CCLD at the end of the chapter because it was about a collaborative approach to an emotional message, which is what we are addressing as well. I was impressed by the media outreach they had,  even getting a Newsweek cover story!  In the end, all the participating organizations benefited from the collaboration.

Connecting with media– ch. 5 and 7

I read through Chapter 5, and it was a good overview of how the media climate has changed in today’s world. I think this is pretty obvious to us, as we are all tweeting, blogging, etc. What I gleaned from the chapter is, though other media are still relevant, the internet is king, and as strategic communicators we need to learn to utilize it effectively.

Chapter 7 is pretty extensive set of practical knowledge for connecting with media that is overall informative and more relevant to our proceeding with our projects in this class. As we begin working on our projects and needing promotion, pitching something to our campus media (for the on campus event people) or local media (for the REP people) will be important. For example, the chapter stressed the importance of relationships with journalists. I’m sure several of us know people who work on either the Tiger or CTV and can use those relationships to leverage coverage for our programs.

The chapter goes into how to approach pitching something to a variety of media sources—television, radio, magazines, and the tried and true newspaper. One part that seemed interesting to me was about the Op-Ed section of the newspaper because I just read an article about non-profits utilizing an Op-Ed in a newspaper or online news. From working at two newspapers, I think the editorial/ opinion section still has a strong presence in the publication, though it can be polarizing: some people hate it, some people really love it. The main thing is you can have a little more fire and passion, though still within control, and more personal perspective, than the coverage that an article written by a reporter may give you. When you think about it though, the people who read op-eds usually have a vested interest in political and social issues and it could be a good way for a non-profit to promote both itself and its cause. Anyway, the Op-Ed is not as relevant to us necessarily, but it stood out to me as something of interest.

National programs addressing violence prevention on college campuses

So through the planning we’ve been doing for the campus speaker group, I met the Director of Health Promotion here at Clemson who forwarded me some information about national campaigns involving college dating violence awareness. The White House and Vice President Biden have a campaign for dating and sexual violence prevention, particularly for young women, called “1 is 2 Many“. Here’s a link to the site: http://www.whitehouse.gov/1is2many . On the site the Vice President has recently asked for the public to share ideas on how to make college campuses safer.

Also here is a video of the VP speaking at University of New Hampshire. The only video I found is the entire speech, which is really long, but it is interesting to skim through and watch a little bit. He talks about concern for this issue as a “collective national value” which I thought was interesting in light of our discussion of the text last week about value-based messages.

Another program I was informed about is The Date Safe Project, found at http://www.datesafeproject.org/. This program addresses its audience on its home page as k-12 schools, universities, parents, and also military, which is pretty interesting. I had never thought of sexual violence in terms of the military, so that was interesting to read about.

They have a youtube channel as well with several videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/DateSafeProject 

I had never heard of these initiatives before, but I thought it was interesting that they are targeting college students in the same way that we would want to through a campus speaker.

research, the target audience, and the value-based message

Reflections on Ch. 3 and 4 in Strategic Communication for Nonprofits

Chapter 3 begins by discussing a task that I’ve learned is one of the most important parts of public relations: research. This seems to be incredibly important for strategic communication, because one can’t have the understanding to create a strategy without the backround research of not only who is the target audience, but what is important to them.

The importance of opinion polling was reinforced to me by reading the high costs associated with conducting this kind of research. It seems like something to benefit a small non-profit would be using the existing polls instead of highering a pollster, though it may not create the personalized results one might get from interviews or focus groups. For example, just googling I found plenty of existing data on public opinion on domestic violence. Here is a link to one poll by the National Center for Public Opinion Polling http://stopvaw.org/uploads/Public_opinion_on_domestic_violence_2.pdf. Some of the results include whether people think it is a public or private issue, the role of police versus NGOs, and the role of the social worker, among other opinions.

Another part of chapter 3 I thought would relate to our projects is the media trend analysis. If we can know who’s covering Safe Harbor, the tone of the coverage, and what kind of messages Safe Harbor is communicating, it will help determine if we’re reaching the target audience. Briefly searching through Google news, Safe Harbor was referenced in local media coverage of negative changes in domestic violence increasing in the area. For example, Safe Harbor executive director Becky Callaham spoke for Safe Harbor in an Anderson newspaper article about increased domestic violence in Oconee County about its increased shelter numbers. In addition, the article talks about the options for victims and provides Safe Harbor’s emergency line. The organization was also referenced in a WYFF report about SC ranking 7th in the nation in domestic violence homicides. In this case, Callaham’s message is about how to recognize signs of domestic violence.  A further media analysis might provide more insight about how the organization can reach its target audience.

To touch on the value-based message in chapter 4, the book has a nice point in saying “if a problem seems too overwhelming for them to solve, their [the audience] eyes glaze over” (50). According to figure 4.2, violence is consider an important issue, so for an organization dealing with issues of violence, such as Safe Harbor, it would seem important to make sure the message aligns with audience values, but is understandable and something people can relate to, and not overwhelmed with statistics or the complexity of the issue.