Mark Holmgren and I met quite a few years ago in Edmonton Alberta. I had taken on the challenge of launching and managing Edmonton’s first inner city street youth program and Mark was an Executive Director at a inner city housing project that served homeless and hard to house inner city residents.

Mark is a highly sought after consultant (Mark Holmgren Consulting – MHC) serving the non profit sector throughout Alberta and for a time in southern Florida. Over this past year, Mark and I resumed our relationship thanks to the wonders of the social web. It didn’t take us long to recognize how aligned we are in our desire to help non profit groups adopt social web strategies for strengthening their services and deepening their relationships with stakeholders.

Mark and I will focus our business alliance on helping non profit organizations develop and execute their online communications strategies to engage their supporters, donors, users and partners. Our collaborative work will include the design & development of websites, and the deployment of social media tools to engage stakeholders and meet organizational business goals.

Our first contract together is delivering a social media strategic plan to a collaborative, rural-based organization, Return to Rural.

Return to Rural is an exciting project aimed at attracting and retaining early and mid- career families to the rural remote communities of the Special Areas and MD of Acadia No.34 region (Southeastern Alberta).

The return to rural philosophy is built on the idea that by blending technology and community, it is possible to create an environment where anyone can live their dream life in a rural community.

MHC has also been contracted to deliver two learning workshops related to social media in the late summer and fall by another client.

If your organization needs help understanding social media and developing strategies to reach and engage your stakeholders, give Mark a call at 780.244.8686 or email him at mark@markholmgren.com

You can reach me by calling (905) 751-6075 or emailing me at brent at socialmediatools dot ca

I am in the final stages of designing a new web site for Social Media Tools for Work & Learning.

My blog has served me well but my new Drupal powered web site will enable me to showcase more of the work I’m doing with organizations and still offer all the benefits of a full blogging platform. Stay tuned!

This is post originating from Louise Suarez a Knowledge Manager, Community Builder & Social Computing Evangelist in the IBM Software Group division has stirred me up like no other post. He puts forth a personal insight that others around the world have being hinting at and writing about for some  time.

Maybe it was just the way he shared his story or the fact that he connected the best of what was happening in the 60’s and 70’s with how the social web is enabling creativity and innovation in people who who care about our future.

The post is a heartfelt revelation from someone immersed in the social media world within IBM. The accompanying video interview with Alexandra Wheeler (Starbucks’ Director of Digital Strategies) on the topic of social strategy and social philosophy underscores Luis’s contention that adopting a social philosophy is an integral ingredient to any social media strategy.

We need some fresh thinking; we need to break the barriers of how business has been conducted in the last few years; we finally need to break free from that financial yoke and eventually strike for that sustainable economy that everyone keeps talking about, but that doesn’t seem to come along as quickly as we thought. It keeps slipping away from our fingers, when we know it’s just so close to us! We need to stop thinking about social strategy and push more along the lines of social philosophy.

Because, after all, who wants to live in a world like today’s, yes, like today’s (With the current financial crisis and all) in say 30 to 50 years from now? Would you be willing to make the same mistakes we have made in the recent past and go through the same painful experiences again? And again! And again!! Would you? Would you like your children to inherit such unsustainable world? I am not sure about you, but I wouldn’t, and somehow something tells me that I will be around, like most of you folks out there, to witness what it would be like. And, for sure, I would want to see a better picture than what we have today! Otherwise, why bother altogether, don’t you think?

This is new territory for me but as I delve deeper into this area, I am coming to believe that SCRM will soon be a very sought after tool (and skill set) in the non profit sector. I believe this because like business organizations, non profits will need to become more efficient at raising money, delivering services, partnering, collaborating and strengthening their staff’s skills using social tech tools. The default organizing software for doing this well is and will increasingly be Social CRM.

Social CRM is about engaging your constituents, not managing them. A Customer Relationship Management software platform (CRM) is a standard tool for segmenting, tracking, monitoring and managing customers in the sales industry. With Social CRM you are able to integrate your social media strategy with the core communication and knowledge management functions of your organization.

As more and more people are conducting their business and personal lives online, companies and non profits are learning that pushing their content to them with the aid of their CRM is not good enough. They are learning the value of giving up control (which doesn’t really apply any more) and inviting people and groups into their operational and innovation theatre.

Watch Paul Greenberg (follow him on Twitter @pgreenbe), one of the early adopter who mapped out the CRM space gives a succinct overview of what’s happening in the Social CRM space. He points out the two converging forces ’social’ and ‘CRM’ spaces that are coming together, yet the third force, ‘companies’ themselves aren’t yet ready for the internal changes that are coming. I picked this video and post up at Jeremiah Owyang’s blog, one of my favourite mentors in the web strategy world.

I know the details of this map are not relevant to many readers but as I reflected on on these clusters I started to think of questions that could help our committee make sense of what’s going on.

If anything, I  think mapping is such a cool social media tool  that just compels you to start making sense of of data and asking relevant questions.

Here are my questions:

• Who these groups are, what are they doing and how successful are they in terms of supporting parent, family and community engagement strategies?

• What are their organization’s relationship to other organization in the same network?

• How the groups might possibly link within their network or external to their network in terms of alliances, partnerships or possibly merging,
• How do these informal networks and groups relate to what we know about emerging challenges in York Region?
• What are the gaps in those networks that could be filled by other groups etc.?
• Can these disparate groups inform the CEWG in its work of supporting parent, family and community engagement strategies?
• Given the fragmented aspects of the map, are there CEWG’s strategies that can be established to better support parent, family and community engagement strategies? Related to this question – what are the CEWG strategies?

Did You Know CH.O from CanadaHelps on Vimeo.

Here  is how Imagine Canada describe it’s cross country mission.

First, in its role as convener of a national dialogue on how to strengthen the collective voice of the sector and develop a common agenda for action, Imagine Canada will use this draft framework to facilitate a nation-wide conversation about what is driving change in the sector and what actions must be taken to maximize the contributions of the sector to Canada and the world over the next decade.

I haven’t being following Imagine Canada’s work but after reading Mark’s post, and the Framework for Action document, I’m going to delve deeper into their resources and cross Canada campaign.

Over the past few months I’ve become more aware of the huge gulf that separates the non profit sector from the business sector in the eyes of the general public, government and media sectors.

As I read the Framework For Action paper that Imagine Canada was using to engage audience’s across Canada, I felt some optimism that Canada was taking a major step to address the misconceptions about the non profit sector.

In its draft “framework for action” Imagine Canada identifies 7 drivers of change, which are:

Driver 1: The increasing importance and influence of social innovation in Canada

Driver 2: Structural shifts in the revenue base which supports the work of charitable and nonprofit organizations

Driver 3: Shortage of talent to strengthen and lead charitable and nonprofit organizations

Driver 4: Lack of growth in the number of volunteers to govern, support and promote civic and community organizations

Driver 5: Heightened demand for transparency, accountability and communication of impact

Driver 6: Growing need for transformative partnerships among charities and nonprofits and with other sectors

Driver 7: Increased use of social media and new technologies for community engagement, outreach to youth and networking

While I recognize these Drivers are important considerations, I think that it would be a useful exercise to frame them as strategic directions for organizations (large or small)  instead of prioritized (numbered) drivers of change. Mark makes a similar point in his post and I support his notion that prioritizing these drivers in terms of their importance isn’t exactly a constructive exercise.

If each driver was framed as a strategy, here’s how these strategies would look like from my perspective.

Strategic Directions: Each organization can address any one or all of these strategies to the degree they are ready and capable.

1. Foster social innovation as a cornerstone value and practice in your organization’s programing

2. Identify potential new funding opportunities that are emerging as a result of the cultural shifts in the revenue base which supports the work of charitable and nonprofit organizations.

3. Create new incentives to recruit and retain leaders that will strengthen and lead charitable and nonprofit organizations

4. Develop new models of volunteer engagement that will address the unique expectations of the emerging cohort of people interested in contributing to social causes.

5. Use social technologies to in creative ways to respond to the heightened demand for transparency, accountability and communication of impact

6. Seek out opportunities to form transformative partnerships among charities and nonprofits and with other sectors

7. With each of the above strategies, increase use of social media and new technologies for community engagement, outreach to service users, youth and networking

I like my new list of strategies because these statements can give an organization a lens to look into the future and encourage them to plot activities that will meet these current challenges.

It’s a bit like looking at the glass and seeing it half full or half empty. Or, is your organization at risk or is it at promise.

In closing I echo Mark’s comment about the need for everyday citizens to shift their understanding of the non profit (social benefit sector).

It’s not enough that organizations undergo a shift in understanding and practice about their work. All citizen’s involved in creating the future we want are needed to do re-think the role of non profit organizations.

]]> http://www.socialmediatools.ca/2010/06/21/imagine-canada-framework-for-action-community-consultations/feed/ 0 http://www.socialmediatools.ca/2010/06/11/robert-eggers-%e2%80%93-bridging-the-division-between-the-dot-com-and-dot-org-world/ http://www.socialmediatools.ca/2010/06/11/robert-eggers-%e2%80%93-bridging-the-division-between-the-dot-com-and-dot-org-world/#comments Fri, 11 Jun 2010 15:44:43 +0000 Brent http://www.socialmediatools.ca/?p=3410

Net Change Week 2010 – Robert Egger keynote from MaRS Discovery District on Vimeo.

My charity rocks, it’s a rooting tooting, awesome, knock em dead, rock and roll, sweet baby James of a charity. Maybe not his exact words, but Robert’s genuine passion, sincerity, pride, anger and commitment flowed through every word he uttered in his keynote.

I was guest blogging at the Net Change Week and was lucky enough to sit in on a speech that altered my view of the social benefit sector and has re-stocked my own passion for change in my community.

Robert Egger is the Founder and President of the DC Central Kitchen, the nation’s first “community kitchen”, where unemployed men and women learn marketable culinary skills while donated food is converted into balanced meals. Since opening in 1989, the DCCK has distributed over 20 million meals and helped 700 men and women gain full-time employment.

I think his message was a bit like the Matrix movie. Take the blue pill and continue believing that the non profit (he hates that term – as I do) sector is just fine. Take the red pill and see how the non profit sector has being convinced into believing that’s all it can be and should be, as after all, it’s the business world that really counts.

Robert told his story from start to the current moment. He put a challenge into the room. He implored us, as representatives of the non profit or 3^rd sector to wake up and stop accepting that it’s OK to continue as if it’s business as usual.

His presentation contained historical, sociological, political, cultural, demographic and economic references. He has done his homework well and armed with this awareness he put forth his challenge. Take the red pill and see the past for what it was and move forward with that awareness to build a true equitable and inclusive community were the weakest, most marginalized and forgotten people are brought in from the margins to fully participate in the community.

Here is a short list of semi quotes I quickly scratched out on my notepad – apologies in advance for my possible misinterpretation:

• Division between dot com and dot org is what keeps us apart. In reality it’s a foolish wall and nothing but a tax structure;
• Went to India and discovered that division kept the Indian people oppressed;
• We can no longer use the mantra “give back” We cannot ask this generation to give back as this generation is inculcated in giving back;
• We are on the verge of transformation away from grant cycle model;
• Demographics spell out that we have a generation that is in great need, our senior population;
• Face of hunger in America is a single mother –feeding people is not enough;
• Non profits have no say in local governments; We need to demand that our politicians present their vision for our sector’s role in the building community;
• The 3^rd sector (non profit) is susceptible to governments who sees us a charity
• Non profits have a vital role to play and politicians need to present a detailed plan to tap into the innovativeness and talents of it’s people.
• Politicians and the media are not informed and don’t make effective judgements about the non profit sectors;
• Let us (non profits) own our economic value; the general public wants what we want; we can use new media to express our position;
• We have a younger generation – completely bent towards doing good by merging work, spirit, leisure;
• How is that we have all this power and we don’t own it.
• The dot com model was designed to divide, but that was then ….we can now break open the model ; we are on the brink of  a powerful time and some of us won’t make it;
• Look to Britain and Estonia as effective models of bringing people from the margins into the centre;
• Women forced into the charity world; by the dot com world; they were put on a short leash and told to that they could “do their thing” for the poor.

Robert has helped me see my terrain in a new light. I’ve swallowed the red pill and I think I’ll put the pills in the muffins at my next community planning roundtable.  I look forward to having the video of Robert’s presentation so I can share it with my colleagues and networks in my my community of York Region.

Thanks NetChange for choosing Robert Eggers as a key note speaker.

Brent MacKinnon

Social Media Tools for Work & Learning

One of the reasons I embrace social media is that it enables conversations to continue. Indeed, I am of the opinion that a community is a continuous conversation.

The Planning Forum for York Region sponsored the first Community – Funder Roundtable. The goal was to begin an ongoing dialogue with funder and policy makers about building our York Region community. Michael Johnny, Manager of the Knowledge Mobilization Unit at York University welcomed everyone and explained what we hoped to accomplish.

To help participants understand the challenges and envision a future where funder groups and community groups work in sync with eachother, the planning group brought in Liz Weaver from the Tamarack Vibrant Communities organization. Liz is also the lead spokesperson for the Hamilton Round-table on Poverty. The Hamilton Round-table has done incredible successful work combining support from the grass roots, government, corporate and community service sectors. The collaboration amongst stakeholders in Hamilton is a success and we (the planning group) felt that we could emulate their process or  at least learn from their experience.

We did learn a lot from Liz about the ingredients that made the Hamilton Roundtable a success and I’m sure many in the room started to imagine how those lessons might apply to York Region.

Like other participants, I thought there would be an opportunity to discuss important and emerging issues about our community. Unfortunately, the dialogue process didn’t get off the ground as a few of the funder representatives felt that it wasn’t necessary to start a new dialogue on building community as there wasn’t any tension on  these issues.

As a member of the planning group, I was very frustrated  by the position taken by a few of the funders. On a personal note, I was disappointed that I didn’t have a chance to talk about how the funding sector can help non profits invest in social web 2.0 strategies and tools.

Liz Weaver
Liz Weaver gave a very inspirational presentation. Despite not be able to engage funders on a new conversation about our York Region community, her talk got us going in the right direction. It’s about 9 minutes long but well worth it. Here is a quick bio taken from her Linkedin site

From 2006-2009, Liz Weaver was the Director for the Hamilton Roundtable on Poverty Reduction a cross-sectoral community initiative with a strategic focus on poverty reduction and the aspiration of Making Hamilton the Best Place to Raise a Child. Liz brings a wealth of community based experience, knowledge and leadership to this position. In June 2009, the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction was recognized by the Canadian Urban Institute with the David Crombie Leadership award.

Dennis Bailey
Dennis Bailey, Executive Director of the Community Legal Clinic of York Region gave a very timely and important talk about community collaborations. He talked on many other important topics however this video only covers his perspective on collaboration amongst community groups.

Well that is my quick synopsis of our first community – funder roundtable. I’m looking forward to hearing from others who where present.

How did you feel when the dialogue process came to a standstill. Where you disappointed or upset with the objecting funder representatives or with the planning group? Did the speakers, Liz, Joanna and Dennis add to your understanding of the current realities faced by service users and social benefit groups in York Region?

I’m interested in hearing from others who were part of our Community – Funder Roundtable.

I’m using the term social learning as I’ve just discovered an interesting discussion on this term at Bud the Teacher’s blog. It should be of interest to schools and community groups involved in student & civic engagement.

I was interested in hearing about her new book “The Networked Nonprofit“. I am using this term in my posts about social benefit groups becoming a networked organization.

Beth Kanter says, “Go Slow, But Go!” from Communications Network on Vimeo.

Running time of this episode is 27 minutes. To view selected sections, use the guide below to forward to the time indicated:

• Beth Kanter may not be human (or what 100,000 Twitter followers get you.) (00:27-3:30)
• Disciplined use of Twitter and what you can expect to get 3:30-8:00)
• Why incremental approaches make sense for your social media experiments (8:00-14:44)
• What about the skeptics in our midst? (4:44-17:04)
• How program and communications staff are partnering for greater impact (17:04-20:00)
• What does the future hold for foundations and social media? (20:00-23:50)
• What is Beth’s new book about? (23:50-2625)

Related Posts:

From the Balcony to the Dance Floor – incremental changes over time