To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• How to Prepare Your Community for a Major Change « The Community Manager – "Change: it’s the one constant in life. Whether you’re introducing a change in ownership, new staff, policy change, technical update, or something else, community members sometimes resist change. Usually, they’re afraid of repercussions that could affect the community they care so much about—so, it comes from a “good place.” That being said, their fears and frustrations can create chaos, and part of your job as community manager is to make transitions as smooth and drama-free as possible. Follow these steps to turn your announcement from a sign of the apocalypse into a community-building win they thank you for."
• Interactive: How America Gives – How America Gives – The Chronicle of Philanthropy- Connecting the nonprofit world with news, jobs, and ideas – The Chronicle of Philanthropy has launched a great new tool: an interactive map of giving data in the US. You can look at total contributions, contributions by household, discretionary income by household, and percentage of income given by household at the national, state, county, and local level.
• Survey says: Most noprofiteers blend their personal/professional brands | Big Duck – "Last week I had the joy of presenting a workshop with the fabulous Danielle Brigida of the National Wildlife Federation at the 7th Annual Bridge to Integrated Marketing & Fundraising Conference in Washington, DC. To gear up for our session on "Mixing Business and Pleasure: Managing Your Personal Brand in Social Media," we asked nonprofiteers (readers like you!) to respond to a quick survey about their own behaviors. We heard from 209 nonprofit staff, consultants, and the people who love us–and some of the results suprised us. While not scientific, the survey offers some interesting insights and we highlighted the key findings in our presentation (included in the slides below and online here). Here are some of those insights…"
• e.politics: online advocacy tools & tactics » How a Twitter Rapid Response Campaign Helped Susan Sarandon ‘Get’ Paid Sick Days – "A coalition of diverse organizations in New York City has banded together to escalate the conversation regarding paid sick days for workers, with an emphasis on getting the NY City Council to pass legislation mandating paid sick days. So far, Council Speaker Christine Quinn has not called for a vote on this issue. But now, it just may happen — after the coaltion (with a little help from their friends) gave us an impromptu course in how to run online rapid response."
• Direct Energy | Direct Energy Contest | Reduce Your Use for GoodReduce Your Use – "Nonprofits, you know it: small changes can make a big difference. At Direct Energy, we’re committed to using our energy expertise to make a difference in people’s lives — so we’re donating up to $100,000 to nonprofits like you to help reduce energy use. Just make a short video of two minutes or less showing us the good work you do in your community. Acceptable submission formats include Windows Media, Quick Time and MPEG (files ending in .wmv, .avi, .mov, .mpg or .mp4). Be passionate. Be creative. Be concise. Tell us about your organization and its vision, how the small things you do make a big difference and why it’s so important that you continue your mission."

Today’s a special day for nonprofits. It started at midnight on the Pacific, when over 200 nonprofits flipped the switch and started racing to see which of them will be one of the three organizations to raise the most donations and win a share of $30,000. They only have 24 hours, when the switch is turned off at midnight tonight.

To get to this point, Twive and Receive nonprofits worked their tails off for weeks building a community and strategizing fundraising tactics. Their goal is to help supporters understand and memorize the simple call-to-action: donate to us on June 14^th.

The Importance of a Strong Community

Building a community takes time and effort. Ideally, you want to get to the point where supporters quickly respond to your calls.

Since the Twive contest kicked off a couple months ago, these nonprofits got to work. They did keyword searches on Twitter to talk to people they have something in common with, began engaging people on Facebook with conversation topics, and pinning images on Pinterest to get the sharing going.

Today, they have people Tweeting links to their fundraising page, supporters strutting the Twibbon and most importantly, donors making their donation. This can only be done with the backing of a strong online community.

The Importance of a Strong Strategy

There isn’t a cookie cutter fundraising strategy that works for every nonprofit across the board. Here’s a collection of what some Twive and Receive participants have done to promote their fundraiser:

The Importance of Doing Good

At the end of the day, these communities win because nonprofits that offer important services benefited. A great side effect is that people are going to feel good about their actions.

If you want to help make an impact, find your favorite cause or city and support them with a donation today on TwiveAndReceive.org. You have until midnight to help that nonprofit be a step closer towards winning an additional cash prize. You’ll be proud of yourself, trust me.

Ifdy Perez is the community manager at Razoo, an online fundraising platform that empowers individuals and nonprofits to meet their fundraising goals through online giving campaigns. She’s also editor of Inspiring Generosity, a blog that gives nonprofits helpful resources on online community management and social media tools.

I knew it was hitting many more people than the average news story when I saw tweets, facebook posts, and other online comments coming from people in my community and network that I rarely see participating online. And just as quickly as people responded with outrage against Komen, the conversation changed to be about the women who would continue to need support and the services that help them. Breast Cancer has impacted my family, like many others, and I grew up participating in Komen’s Race for the Cure in Portland every year with my mom. Komen’s announcement changed people’s minds and it didn’t matter that they later said PP affiliate could apply for funding (whether or not they are granted will be seen then) because the “break up” was final for many.

Jumping into action, Allison Fine, Beth Kanter, Stephanie Rudat, Lisa Colton, and Lucy Bernholz starting moving beyond the updates and long conversation threads and towards a collective call to action. You can read the summary of how the free agent community came together to self-organize and create a public action as well as a full report of the lessons learned and reflections on the #TakeBackThePink campaign in this public google doc.

10 Lessons from Community-Driven Organizing

After the #TakeBackThePink twitter campaign during the Super Bowl, Beth prompted all of us to share lessons and reflections in a google doc to be captured and shared. Here are the lessons we pulled out as a group:

1. We could not plan for an event like this, however as individuals who are  unencumbered by organizational rules or policies, and that we have our own large networks of people to bring to an effort, and that we are comfortable working in a dynamic, flat, environment, we reacted very quickly and nimbly to events as they unfolded and provided avenues for action for other people angry at Komen. A core group of the organizers are fluent with a variety of social media platforms including Twitter, Pinterest (a fun opportunity to take it out for a social change spin, thought Beth!) and Facebook, plus Stephanie’s graphic design expertise. As one participant recalls, “There was an immediate sense of relatedness amongst the group conjoined by leaders.  We all saw something in the uproar and possibility for ourselves and those we care about.”
2. #takebackthepink was a particularly resonant phrase with our group because it represented the opportunity to begin to separate Komen from the color pink. As Lucy would tweet later, “Pink is a color not an org.” A fundamental part of our effort was to reestablish the primacy of women’s health over the branding concerns of a single organization. We believe we created an opportunity for a large number of people to participate in this process, and the momentum to continue the discussion moving forward.
3. There were two moments of tension during the week between a centralized approach and a network approach. The first time, the effort split in two; with one group focused on fundraising and another on advocacy and awareness. The second, a faction chose to opt out of the Super Bowl effort. Both times it was brought up that it was no longer about recouping money to PP (as that was already achieved in the first 48 hours) but was about redirecting people’s emotional responses, keeping people connected to causes and organizations even if they weren’t Komen, and demonstrating the importance of knowing what the orgs do that you support.
4. There was a flow of people in and out of the effort depending on their interest and availability. A public thread rather than the private email thread would have been more in keeping with our interest in and value of transparency. We chose the email vehicle believing that the element of surprise would be important to our efforts. It turned out not to be the case.
5. Finding the messaging middle ground in a fast changing environment was very challenging. Take Back the Pink was seen by some as Komen bashing and by others as “too nice.” We did our best to find a positive place for Super Bowl Sunday: there are a lot of organizations and way to support breast health, here are options in addition to Komen. It was harder to communicate than, “Screw Komen, fund Planned Parenthood” and it’s unclear how successful we were in explaining the shift and making the message clear.
6. We could have done a better job of looking for other hashtags in real-time and piggy-backed on them in order to weave together different conversations.
7. We developed and shone a spotlight on nonprofits and transparency, an unusual element to a discussion of pro-choice and women’s health issues.
8. Defining success in a very fluid situation was also very challenging. If fifty people retweeted with our hashtag was that success? Five hundred people? Five thousand people? An interesting model to use for comparison is Occupy Wall Street. Rather than using numeric outputs as goals, perhaps our effort, simply being and spreading, was successful. We are still wrestling with this question, although perhaps one answer is that if a single person learned about a new resource or organization that was success. Having the single largest media event of the year on the immediate horizon made for a great leverage point.
9. It would have been great to have advocacy organizations sign on as participants and partners in this event, however, when we did bump up against organizations they were unable to move fast enough with their approval processes to fully participate. This will continue to hamper the ability of organizations to work with “free agents” like us who need to meet an opportunity like this with speed, agility and a lack of concern for traditional message controls. Perhaps organizations can more fully participate in the next phase of development of the Facebook page.
10. This group is open to continuing the Facebook page and the conversation about general breast health and the array of organizations and resources available to women.  Clearly, there is a void in the digital space for being a resource to those who want to learn, contribute, volunteer, receive services but don’t know of all of the options or how to vet. Our capacity is stretched, though, we all participated in this effort as volunteers.

Observations & Reflections

Additionally, I want to pull out a few things I keep reflecting back on from the campaign and the organizing process that I think are influential to how we plan for and execute actions as community members and how we support them as organizations.

How do you evaluate and recognize “critical mass” of a free agent community? As Allison points out in her reflection post, after she created the Causes campaign and witnessed the response, she knew there was enough interest and people to do something bigger. But how did she know? How does your organization evaluate, on the fly in real-time, what critical mass is around a piece of news, an issue, a campaign, or even just an idea? How do you then say “this is it” and move to the next stage? In this case, I think critical mass was established by having more than just two or three, but actually five, six, even seven or eight people willing to jump in to help – and help by organizing and thinking and planning, not just sharing the message or plan once it was created. For organizations working on evaluating critical mass in real-time, it may be different as you would also factor in staff capacity to support the organizers from the community.

In a crisis, there are two versions of reaction: one against the perpetrator (in this case it was Komen, “how could they?”), the other in support of the victims (PP at first, and then quickly women in general). It is hard to switch the focus of a campaign after it is launched, so it’s important that you frame the story, your calls to action, and the actions themselves consistently. It was discussed openly and repeatedly on email chains and Facebook threads whether the focus was against Komen or in support of PP or even in support of women’s health. It was agreed every time that the focus was really on women’s health and redirecting people’s outrage, emotion, and attention so that instead of giving up on Komen and all breast cancer or women’s health issues, people would continue to participate, donate, and support organizations working on these issues. That’s why the resources on the TakeBackThePink wiki point to nonprofit and donor directories so people can research all the organizations working on breast cancer and women’s health, for example.

To organize and operate nimbly, you need to leave a crumb trail for others to join and follow you. This is incredibly important. It was necessary that the group collaborating on email and across multiple comment threads on Facebook create a cohesive place to refer new people when they jumped in, and a place for people to follow if they had to jump out. To the lesson above about the flow of participants in and out of the group, creating some central places to point people would support the people consistently reaching out to engage people as well as those who did not want to be involved but wanted to share the plans with others. To that end, I helped quickly create a shared google doc so that the messaging, calls to action, and other important links could be docked and shared easily. I also created a customized bit.ly link for the google doc so that sharing the information and inviting people to participate would be easy to do. Furthermore, it wasn’t just the google doc of messaging and information that was helpful, but that in the doc and on Beth’s wiki we provided direct links to the Twitter search for #takebackthepink and places to engage like the Facebook page, Allison’s Causes space, and Deanna’s Tumblr. Creating shortcuts like this by aggregating all the related links or resources together helped both the “main organizers” and all those coming in and out of the thread.

What do you think?

What other lessons or observations do you have from this campaign or others? What have you tried or experimented with? Would love to learn from you!

Are you fueling with love?

Regardless of what work you are doing – campaigning for political change, providing services to your local community, educating others, or anything else – would it look different, would it feel different, would it operate differently if love was the central message?

To Mama With Love

I’m incredibly inspired to participate in this year’s To Mama With Love campaign from Epic Change. My mother taught me many things, and I feel like with every year she teaches me more – whether she knows it or not. She’s taught me a lot about love, relationships, and our interactions with the world; and she’s also taught me about things that many may not think have anything to do with love, but they do.

The biggest lesson: Everyone has something to give.

I can’t think of a lesson, an outlook on life, and a guiding principle for my work that is more about love than this one. When working with communities, trying to enable change, looking for opportunities to spark collaboration, love seems like a strange thing to think about for many people. When you approach any of those activities, any of the work we do in this sector, with the idea that truly everyone has something to contribute, the way you speak, the way you interact, and the way you lead changes – and changes into something powerful and contagious.

I see this lesson in the work of 350.org. I see this lesson in the local councils of London trying to open up their data and their leadership. I see this work in public maps like Open Green Map. I see it in so many places, and it’s working. We are starting a movement that has love at the very foundation. And that’s what gives me hope that we will be successful.

Join me in sharing the love

I’ve created a heartspace for my mother and for some of the things she’s taught me:

But To Mama With Love isn’t just about my mama, it’s about 4 special women making great impact around the world. This year, TMWL is raising funds that will support the work of 4 passionate women who truly believe that everyone has something to give:

“Mama Lucy” Kamptoni sold chickens in her Tanzanian village & turned her income into a primary school that now serves over 400 children. Her students consistently score at the top of over 120 schools in the Arusha district of Tanzania. Mama Lucy is an Epic Change fellow, and has been an invited speaker at the European Summit for Global Transformation.

Recently named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people and Newsweek’s 150 Women Who Shake the World, Suraya Pakzad is an outspoken Afghan activist on behalf of the rights of women and girls. She originally founded the Voice of Women Organization (VWO) to educate girls in Kabul in secret schools under the Taliban, and has since expanded to support and assist underprivileged women and children throughout Afghanistan.

At 19, New Jersey native Maggie Doyne used her life savings from babysitting to start Kopila Valley children’s home in Nepal, which has grown to a home for over 40 children, and a school serving over 200 students. Now, at just 23 years old, Maggie’s work has been featured in the New York Times, and her remarkable story has earned her the DoSomething & CosmoGirl awards.

Renu Shah Bagaria is the founder of Koseli, a center for children in Kathmandu, Nepal, who, due to their economic circumstances and the country’s recent civil war, live in the city’s streets and slums. Koseli, which means “gift”, provides education, food and tender loving care for over 75 young students, and, in the evenings, hosts an adult education program for local women.

And now I hope you’ll join me!

To Mama With Love is an open, community campaign. There are many ways that you can contribute:

• What has your mother taught you? Please share the stories, insights, and lessons on the heartspace wall.
• If you can, please consider donating so that we can raise funds in honor of our mothers to support these inspiring women making great impact around the world.
• Build your own heartspace, share the campaign, and share your love!

—–

To Mama With Love is a collaborative online art project that honors moms across the globe and raises funds to invest in remarkable women who are transforming our world. Scheduled for May 3-8, 2011, the site invites participants to create socially shareable “heartspaces” that include words, videos, photos & investments in honor of mamas they love. Learn more!

To follow more of the things I find online, you can follow @amysampleward on Twitter (which is just a blog and resource feed), or find me on Delicious (for all kinds of bookmarks).

• Don’t assume everyone is offline | DavePress – "When I’m talking at events or to meetings of people within an organisation about the benefits of moving communications and engagement activity online, I often have someone put their hands up and say: 'I totally get what you are saying, Dave, but the problem is that we can’t move all this stuff online, because not everyone has access to the web.' There are two responses I usually give here. One is the most obvious and slightly boring, which is that online engagement is an as-well-as, and not an instead-of. Keep doing the offline stuff for the offline people! I might also ask at this point, however, ‘what are you doing to fix this?’. In other words, if a large number of people in an area haven’t the access or the skills to use the internet – what are local public services doing to get this fixed?"
• Kiss Malaria Goodbye – I really like the use of video and the compelling message/ask in this campaign: kiss! I wonder, though, when looking at the campaign information and actions if participants or potential-participants see the connection between responding to the ask (upload your kiss – your kiss can make it better) and the real goal of tackling Malaria? What do you think?
• Get free postage and mail books you can spare to a child in need. | The Giving Effect – I love this campaign because it makes participation easy, let's participants feel like they are making a difference but also helping directly, and can be done from anywhere. Basic elements that should be considered in any campaign. What do you think?
• HOW TO: Create Custom iFrame Tabs on Your Nonprofit’s Facebook Page – "In March 2011 Facebook disabled the popular Static FMBL App that many nonprofits had used to create custom tabs on their Facebook Pages. Rather than having their apps be based on FBML, Facebook has now switched over to iframes. Those nonprofits that have already created custom tabs using the Static FBML app will continue to be supported (not indefinitely, however), but those that want create custom tabs for the first time or switch over to iframes have a few new apps to experiment with, namely Static HTML iFrame Tabs, Static HTML for Pages, and TabPress."
• E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis … – "The truth is that everyone is, indeed, a community facilitator / manager nowadays, as you saw in a recent blog entry where I referenced Gautam’s comments along these very same lines. So I thought I would develop further on this topic, specially since, earlier on today, I bumped into a couple of rather relevant and interesting links very much connected to this topic that I am sure you would enjoy quite a bit. The first one is coming from my good friend, Gautam Ghosh, once again, who earlier on tweeted a link to a blog post that he put together in September 2010 and which, despite the months gone by already, it’s just as valid today, if not more!, than ever before. Have a look into “5 Skills for Online Community Managers” and find out what some of the community facilitator traits would be like, according to him…"

Samsung pledged to contribute up to $100,000 through this social action challenge, providing a donation of $5 to the Dan Marino Foundation each time someone pledged their support of autism awareness by sharing an infographic with their Facebook friends or sending a tweet with the hashtag, #teamautism. And in just 72 hours, they reached their goal of $100,000 through TeamUpForAutism.com.

Interview: Online Campaigning Success Story

That’s a whole lot of donations in just 3 days! So, I connected with Sloane Berrent, Founder of The Causemopolitan to learn more about this success story – she’s working with JESS3 on this entire campaign. They created the infographic and pulled her in for the overall digital strategy.

Going into the campaign, did you really expect to hit your goal in just 3 days? What were the goals/expectations you had set for the campaign internally?

It was truly a surprise to reach the goal in 3 days. There was a campaign they did in December with a very similar look and feel. That campaign had an infographic and charity partner and a set amount of money Samsung were donating based on social actions taken online. That campaign reached the goal, but it took a month to do it. Which is still amazing to take your online community and engage them in the process. A big success. That said, this time around, Samsung, The Dan Marino Foundation and JESS3 were looking for more bite. The goal was $100k and we were given a month, but were definitely hoping for two weeks. It was absolutely amazing to reach our goal so quickly and it’s because of all of the hard work we did beforehand that it happened. That and a bit of groundswell.

What kind of post-campaign planning did you do before launching; what do you plan to do?

We really focused on building our team of advocates before we launched the campaign. I know a lot of campaigns where people feel that you launch and put it out there and then you bring people in and have them share in the experience. But for this campaign we really baked them in early. We contacted autism advocates and let them know this campaign was coming. We didn’t have all the pieces finished, but we drafted outreach and pulled together lists. It’s really important to be prepared when you hit the gate. Sometimes campaigns change when they’re live and that hard work you put in gets discounted and sometimes it makes all the difference. It’s not a gamble though. You have to do the work, identify your target groups and know who your advocates are. You have to pay attention to what happens in that first 24 hours and be willing to change your strategy to fit what the market is telling you because you never really know what’s going to happen with a campaign until it’s live.

How do you see the social media engagement and outreach involved in this campaign impacting the post-campaign social media use by the Foundation?

We really worked on educating Dan Marino and The Dan Marino Foundation on how to effectively use social media. They both were aware of what was out there, but we talked a lot about engagement and creating conversation. Both have seen a rise in their numbers of followers and fans and sometimes that quantity helps to get to quality. I don’t think nonprofits should have to fight tooth and nail for every follower. Spikes like this campaign are good for nonprofits and then they can back into these tools and find a way that works for their bandwidth on a day-to-day basis.

To others looking at your success as an inspiration for their own campaigns and fundraising plans, what tips or recommendations would you share?

Thank people one time too many. I’m serious! Say thank you and then say thank you again. That’s a bit of secret sauce but you can never say thank you enough to people who do things for you because they want to and not because they’re paid to or work for you. That’s a powerful change agent. It’s like the idea of second gifts. Someone makes a gift, they get a thank you and then they make a second gift because they were impressed with the thank you. It’s a cycle. When people feel recognized and valued, truly valued, they are willing to go to bat for you. Social media is complicated and wily at times, sometimes you’re the hare and sometimes you’re the tortoise. But the key is bringing your supporters along with you to your next campaign. Then success will follow you because people love being a part of not only your cause but the feeling they get from helping your cause.

Has your organization looked to partner with another organization or a company (the way the Dan Marino Foundation partnered with Samsung – with dedicated matching funds) for a campaign? Have you tried a Twitter campaign with donations per tweet? What lessons would you share – what questions would you like to ask Sloane?

• winner joins a P&G Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program expedition
• possibility to win $15,000 for your favorite charity that’s working in the front lines of the global water crisis
• every vote for your entry means P&G will donate a day’s worth of clean drinking water (2L) to a person in need in a developing country

The contest runs most of this month, so register your blog today and start rallying supporters to help get donated water to those in need, and join the Children’s Safe Drinking Water expedition!

Learn more about Clean Water Blogivation!

Have you signed up? If so, leave your blog URL below so we can be sure to check out your post and support you!

Lesson #1: Design an action and invitation that’s doable and interesting – while focused on your goal.

Stacey Monk and I exchanged messages last week, brainstorming the idea of pulling bloggers together to support Beth’s birthday campaign.  We wanted it to be something fun and interesting, so people would want to join – a surprise party!  And we wanted it to be easy to do – write a blog post!

First, we created an open Google Doc where we put in the introduction language, so anyone that clicked through from someone’s blog or Twitter post would have context about what was happening (and included a numbered list up to 53, so people could easily see where to add their name and blog address).

Next, I sent out an invitation that included a simple explanation and invitation to join with easy steps for those interested.  When sending out an invitation, it’s important to remember that the language you use needs to be appropriate for those you’re inviting, as well as to their audience as they could easily repurpose the language or calls to action you use to more quickly and easily share/spread the campaign.  Here’s a copy of the initial email as an example:

Subject: Help wish Beth Kanter a happy 53rd!

Hi friends-

As you probably know, Monday is Beth Kanter’s birthday.  Stacey Monk and I didn’t want the day to go by too quietly so are hoping you’ll join us in making a big splash to celebrate!

Her birthday wish is to raise money for the Sharing Foundation using Causes and we think we could help her crush her goal of sending 53 Cambodian children to school by raising $530.  We’re trying to throw her an online surprise party by assembling a blogsquad of 53 bloggers to publish a post on Monday that shares how Beth has impacted your work and shares her birthday wish with your blog audience.  Of course, I hope you’ll make a gift to make her wish come true too

We’re just hoping to make her birthday super happy by making her wish come true and reminding her just how much good she does.

If you’re interested, just:

1) Write your name and blog address on the signup form here: http://bit.ly/bethbdayblogs

2) Publish your post first thing Monday morning. Include a link back to her birthday wish post at http://bit.ly/beth53

3) Pass this invite on to anyone you think might want to join us.

And don’t forget to wish her a Happy Birthday Monday on Twitter too with the tweet she’s asked us to pass along: “Happy birthday #beth53! Let’s send 53 Cambodian kids to school: http://bit.ly/beth53”

Thank you so much for your help, support and participation!

Amy (& Stacey)

To recap: our audience included bloggers in the nonprofit technology and social impact sector; our goals were to help reach Beth’s $530 fundraising goal and recruit 53 “happy birthday” blog posts reflecting on Beth’s work.  The campaign was focused on the goal and created with the audience in mind (how they behave, what they are interested in, what they could do on short notice, and how they would want to participate).

Lesson #2: Encourage participants to share, invite others and promote their own participation.

Part of using blog posts in the campaign is the strategy that in order to participate, people are promoting!  We also created and provided shortened URLs for the two links we wanted everyone to use (the link to the Google Doc where people were registering their participation: http://bit.ly/bethbdayblogs and the link to Beth’s birthday wish blog post: http://bit.ly/beth53).  Using these shortened URLs and sharing them in the invitation via email and posts on Twitter meant that others were likely to use them and easily share the campaign.

We also included the hashtag for Twitter that Beth promoted in her Birthday Wish blog post (#beth53 – review the Twitter stream for the hashtag), another way that people could find and share tweets about the surprise party easily.

To recap: we took advantage of popular techniques for sharing and networking conversations including URL shorteners and hashtags.

Lesson #3: Create compositions that allow for variations on a theme.

What was key to our approach was that we did not say where people had to post, or exactly what they had to say.  We even said that they could do something else entirely!  This meant more people were empowered to participate because they could make it their own.

Some people posted on their own blogs.  Some posted to community blogs like NetSquared.  Others posted on Facebook (using the Notes application).  Some tweeted.  And others came up with even more unique ways to get involved.  (See the Google Doc for links.)

To recap: we invited people to express themselves in the way they chose while still being part of reaching the goals.

Lesson #4: Create easy ways to track and follow the campaign.

Using the URL shorteners and hashtags made sharing tweets, blog posts and calls to action easy to post and share, but it also meant that everything was easy to follow!  We could follow the hashtag on Twitter using Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com/) and could use the tracking built into Bit.ly to track clicks on the links (http://bit.ly/) (or try doing a search using Tweetmeme).

The Google Doc that served as an information and context piece for people sharing and finding the campaign also served as the sign-up sheet for participants, so people could add their own name and blog information to the campaign details without Stacey or I having to track them down.  The email invitation also turned into a reporting mechanism as people would reply-all to share their link with others participating.

To recap: the methods for sharing and promoting the campaign were also designed to create easy ways of measuring participation and impact.

Lesson #5:  Say thanks!

What I found most rewarding in this campaign was that saying “thanks!” was part of it from the start: people’s blog posts and twitter messages were all saying thanks to Beth for ways her work had impacted their own.  It had a deep gratitude through and through.

Because of the tools mentioned above (the hashtag and URLs and Google Doc), it was easy to reply on Twitter or elsewhere to thank people for their support and participation.  As people replied to the invitation email, I could also email them directly to thank them for participating and sharing in the celebration.  Stacey and I both sent thank you emails to the full list of participants towards the end of the day, too.

To recap: saying thanks is important – we all know that.  But finding ways to say it where people are participating (if they are tweeting your campaign, thank them publicly in Twitter, for example) will only further spread and promote the campaign.

It’s been a very fun experiment and a great way to spend a Monday!

A huge thanks to my friend and colleague Stacey Monk, the woman behind Epic Change, without whom this surprise party wouldn’t have happened!  And one last thanks to Beth, for giving us a reason to come together in celebration!

NOTE:  Beth was able to smash her goal of raising $530 by getting $4,540 donated to help buy school uniforms and send Cambodian children to school via the Sharing Foundation.  We also smashed our goal of recruiting 53 bloggers, with 66 signed up and many more participating in other ways.  Thanks!

Today we are throwing an online surprise birthday party for Beth Kanter, and you’re invited!

In her birthday wish post, Beth announces that she’s trying to send 53 Cambodian children to school by raising $530.  Last week, Stacy Monk and I were chatting and thought that our community could help smash that goal by raising much more funds as well as awareness for the work the Sharing Foundation does in Cambodia.

How does it work?

We’re hoping to inspire 53 bloggers to publish a post today that shares how Beth has impacted his/her work and shares Beth’s birthday wish with his/her blog audience.  (Of course, you’re invited to make a gift to make her wish come true as well!)

What’s the point?

We’re hoping to make her birthday a very happy one by:

1. making her wish come true, and
2. reminding her how much she’s contributed to the community.

You’re Invited!

If you’d like to join the surprise party for Beth, simply follow these steps:<

• Add your name and blog address to the big list (Google Document).
• Publish a blog post about how Beth has impacted your work (be sure to include a link back to her birthday wish post: http://bit.ly/beth53).
• Wish her a Happy Birthday on Twitter, too.  Here’s a tweet you can use: “Happy birthday @kanter #beth53! Let’s send 53 Cambodian kids to school: http://bit.ly/beth53”

Thanks, Beth!

It’s hard for me to pick just one thing to talk about when it comes to the question of how Beth’s work has influenced mine, after all she is a terrific example, leader, and contributor to the nonprofit technology sector.  There’s one thing that does stand out to me and I’d like to highlight it today:

Beth is a terrific chronicler. She takes notes, constantly.  She shares those notes in real time (or as near as she can).  She’s always open to suggestions, feedback, and comments—and strategically uses those to help herself flesh out the notes as they develop into ideas and insights. When she comes up with a new thread, she finds ways of linking it to other ideas by including reference links to previous blog posts (including her own or by others) to keep track of how developments happened.

She’s a great inspiration and reminder for me in this area.  I often end up with thoughts jotted in a note on my phone, ideas to explore written in my notebook and then 5 different links bookmarked that reference the same thought – but don’t take the time to pull them all together!  I’m working on it

Thank you, Beth, for all that you do to keep the community involved in every step of your work – know it is appreciated tremendously!  And happy birthday!