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Monitoring Your Online Territory
Guest Post: Mitch Hurst, MH Group
As social media becomes more ubiquitous organizations need to better understand how their issues are being influenced in online conversations. There’s a lot of talk about “listening” to discussions taking place online and, particularly for organizations that serve broad constituencies, monitoring social media to gain a better understanding of how issues are playing out.
Are You Tapping the Wisdom of the Crowds?
(At our 2010 Communications Network Conference in Los Angeles, James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds, offered some suggestions on how foundations can tap into the collective thinking of crowds. In her guest post below, Rebecca Arno, Vice President of Communications, The Denver Foundation and Chair, Communications Network, shares some examples of how new communications technology is supporting crowdsourcing in philanthropy. Her post is reprinted with permission from CausePlanet.)
Social media has great power to connect people within and across communities–geographic communities, communities of practice and interest and communities of faith and belief. How are nonprofit organizations mining these connections to achieve their missions? Crowdsourcing is often the answer.
How to Make the Most of Google’s New Analytics Tools
Guest Post: Jai Sen, Sen Associates
Analytics. The very word excites some and sends others running for the hills.
But there is good news. Google Analytics has emerged as the tool of choice for communications professionals, and Google has put some real muscle behind improving it. As of this writing, most everyone should have access to the new version of the application.
Count On Us When Countdown Begins (VIDEO)
His title might say president, Pittsburgh Foundation, but in his heart Grant Oliphant, a former chair of the Communications Network, is still every bit of a communicator (and a damn fine storyteller.)
A case in point: late last year, Oliphant was a featured presenter at Tedx Pittsburgh. His talk was a meditation on “countdown,” a word which didn’t appear in the English language until 1952. Back then, it referred to the process popularized by NASA of counting backwards from 10 to a rocket launch. Today, though, the world usually means marking progress toward “a particular moment in time…a countdown to war…a countdown to summer.”
New Tools, New Voices (VIDEO)
Guest Post: Susan Herr, PhilanthroMedia
When trustees of the Mary Black Foundation decided to tackle teen pregnancy in the communities of Spartanburg County, South Carolina, they did what they usually do: make grants.
From the period between 2009-2011, the foundation committed $200,000 in multi-year grants to efforts that ensure high quality teen pregnancy prevention programs are available to the youth of Spartanburg; train parents and trusted adults to have open conversations with their children about love, sex, and relationships; and increase access to condoms and contraceptives.
But staff also saw this program area as an ideal opportunity to deepen the impact of the foundation by integrating strategic communications into its work.
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