I love this book “The Groundswell” , winning in a world transformed by social technologies written by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff.  Here is how they introduce their approach to writing the book. We have taken “a broader view of this phenomenon(social networks, media, tools, web 2.0 etc), one that encompasses not just today’s technologies but the fundamental change in behaviour now happening online. The groundswell is: A social trend in which people use technologies to get things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations. (non profits corporations as well).

This book has rounded out my thinking and made clear why it’s so important for non profit organizations and businesses to learn how to survive and thrive in the groundswell.  The next excerpt from the Groundswell book is a bit long, but for me it so accurately captures the the depth, breadth and permanence of the seachange in how we relate and do business with each other in our neighbourhoods, countries and world.

The groundswell is broad, ever shifting, and ever growing. It encompasses blogs and wikis; podcasts and YouTube; and consumers who rate products, buy and sell from each other, write their own news, and find their own deals. It’s global. It’s unstoppable. It af­fects every industry—those that sell to consumers and those that sell to businesses—in media, retail, financial services, technology, and health care. And it’s utterly foreign to the powerful companies and institu­tions—and their leaderships—that run things now. Simply put, the groundswell is a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other instead of from companies. If you’re in a company, this is a challenge.

The groundswell phenomenon is not a flash in the pan. The tech­nologies that make it work are evolving at an ever-increasing pace, but the phenomenon itself is based on people acting on their eternal desire to connect. It has created a permanent, long-lasting shift in the way the world works. This book exists to help companies deal with the trend, regardless of how the individual technology pieces change. We call this ground-swell thinking.

Having worked in the non profit sector for many years, I know well the challenges of surviving as an organization, let alone having and maintaining a web presence that represents the Mission, staff and operations of the organization. The groundswell for non profits and businesses simply means that they need to learn how to connect more effectively with the ever growing numbers of individuals (73% in the USA) who are active online users.

In the non profit sector, street youth, newcomers, to Canada, the unemployed, seniors wanting to reach out to distant relatives or people struggling with health issues are using online tools to connect with others and access resources. Ignoring the way these people are communicating and using online tools is not an option when your in the capacity building, social change and community betterment business. For social change agents and community organizations, it’s time to listen and learn how to participate within the groundswell.

Non profit organizations like any other business, are now faced with delivering services to a consumers who have access on the social web to knowledge, options and tools that aids them in their everyday living needs. They expect service organizations and staff at the minimum, to be knowledgeable of navigating the web and capable of connecting them with the right information and resources. They no longer wish or expect to passively wait for service. These non profit organizations, by their charter and by their funding requirements strive to adhere to standards of transparency, inclusiveness, equity. Giving people pithy statements about what wonderful services and worthy purposes that your organization promises to deliver isn’t good enough in todays networked world.

So where does creating an online strategy fit in to this picture? Well, the good news is that with good old fashioned planning and a sincere desire to understand what your audience is doing and talking about, you can initiate an organizational change that brings you into dialogue with your constituents, within the groundswell. My next post will focus on the framework for creating your online strategy.

Brent Learning Community, Research, purpose groundswell, online, seachange, strategy