Webinars, Videos, and More...
On a regular basis, the Communications Network features video interviews and webinars with people inside foundations and those on the outside (looking in) about what works in foundation communications, how to be more effective, and trends and other developments worth noting.
Making Networks Work For You
There’s much to recommend a new report from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Monitor Institute — especially if you are engaged in communications for a foundation or nonprofit, and are trying to connect with and/or harness people who are gathering in networks of their own making.
While the report’s primary focus is on how grantmaking organizations can use the new kinds of networks to advance change on the community level, much of its guidance can be helpful to communications practitioners.
Got A Problem That Needs Solving? We Can Help
The Communications Network is soliciting proposals for the portion of our Fall 2011 Conference — Sept. 21-23 in Boston — that we’re billing as “group therapy.” We want to organize sessions around the “best of the best” problems you would like some help solving — ones that vex, frustrate, confuse, have you scratching your heads, or looking up to the skies for guidance.
By answering our call, we can help get whatever is bugging you off your chest. We’re giving you the chance to invite other savvy conference attendees — communications professionals who work in philanthropy in the U.S., Canada, and even Europe — to brainstorm solutions you all can take back to the office.
Can Foundations Train Their Grantees to Be Effective Communicators?
The way Eric Brown, communications director for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, tells it in a recent Communications Network webinar, it wasn’t a sudden “Eureka moment” that sparked his desire to assess the effectiveness of the training programs his foundation had been offering for years to help grantees develop effective communications skills.
Instead, he was just simply itching to know if these programs were doing any good. “It was bugging me because I didn’t know,” says Brown.
Harvesting Social Media Lessons Off the Job
One of the standing features of this blog, as regular readers know, are posts about the different ways communications pros are trying to meaningfully wrap their heads and hands around social media — from Twitter to podcasting to Facebook to blogging — to advance their foundations’ work.
Meet Your Audiences Where They Are
When you want to reach new audiences, what do you do? How do you go beyond the limitations of emailing to targeted lists or even posting to your website? Tweeting can help, but what if people don’t click through the attached links?
