Here is a short and crisp video about online fundraising in Canada. Non profit organizations will be turning more and more to social media strategies to financially support their Mission. This video captures the key data and the trends – well worth a few minutes viewing.
Did You Know CH.O from CanadaHelps on Vimeo.
My colleague Mark Holmgren (Anticipate) has written an insightful post about his experience attending an Imagine Canada Forum held in Edmonton. Imagine Canada is doing a series of Provincial forums and Edmonton was their first stop.
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.
This is an excellent video (slideshare below) from Tim Davis, a consultant in Britain. He is one of the founders of UK Youth Workers Online site. It is a bit long (20 min.) but very worthwhile. I think the video is quite useful for youth workers who are struggling with how to address risk issues of youth participating in online social networking sites. Download the fullYouth-Work-and-Social-Networking-Final-Report
I found these videos in my research on A Small Group and the work of Peter Block. I haven’t watched all of them yet however Margaret Wheatley is a world renowned thought leader on community change so I don’t expect to be disappointed. There are 10 videos in all with each one covering a unique aspects of healthy community change.
Lately I’ve being immersed in a variety of community restoration and change groups. The focus for many of these efforts seem to default to righting inequities and fixing long standing communication and power issues. People like Margaret Wheatley and Peter Block offer alternative strategies for community change. I am suggesting that we use or integrate elements of these community engagement strategies however the shift to that thinking is pretty hard to make.
Despicte these challenges, I’m enjoying the planning sessions and I especially like contributing my experience in online communication strategies and tools to support these change processes. I hope you find some great questions in watching these videos. As Peter Block says, the right questions can be more transformative than answers.
York Region community organizations and those with a keen interest in solving long standing systemic issues are beginning a process of discussion on “engagement”. The York Region District School Board, concerned about school – community engagement, is a key public organization in the planning for a roundtable discussion event to held in February 2010. The roundtable planning group is comprised of members from a diverse collection of social benefit organizations and local planning networks.
In an environment where cynicism prevails, the challenge of tapping into new and creative actions seems daunting at best. To me, the driving questions at this point revolves around “how do we create a stronger sense of belonging, marked by authentic engagement (in its many forms), in our community”.
When we talk about community, belonging, engagement, systemic barriers, authentic dialogue, inclusive processes etc.. we are talking complexity. How do we have a meaningful and sense making discussion when we are constantly wearing our silo centred, agency representative hat? It’s a bit like seeing the fairy dancing on the head of the pin. You know that fairy is there but you just have to hold the pin in the right way to see him/her.
I think that one of the ways to see that fairy is to somehow suspend or put on the shelf for the moment our agency representation hat and just wear our community citizen hat. When we do that, we can engage with each other and talk about what community means, where does belonging fit into community and what might our community look like if we waved our magic wand and on and on. I think there would be wonderful lessons in that discussion that we can build on and potentially influence policy makers in our organizations. Even more importantly, those lessons can impact us on individual (personal) levels as community citizens, potentially creating a ripple effect in our relationships within our spheres of belonging.
This video by Mark Schenk from Anecdote expands the explanation of the Cynefin model. I like this model as a tool that can help us understand what we are getting into with our community roundtable planning discussions. I think there are some great tips in the Cynefin framework that we can incorporate in our planning for of the roundtable. I especially like the simplicity of the Cynefin framework and how it points to the importance of looking at patterns and building on patterns that show promise.
“A vicious cycle is leaving nonprofits so hungry for decent infrastructure that they can barely function as organizations—let alone serve their beneficiaries. The cycle starts with funders’ unrealistic expectations about how much running a nonprofit costs, and results in nonprofits’ misrepresenting their costs while skimping on vital systems—acts that feed funders’ skewed beliefs”.
I found this article, titled “The Non Profit Starvation Cycle” – Sanford Social Innovation Review on the Ontario Non Profit Network Site.
What an eye opening and revealing paper. The research report is called, Nonprofit Overhead Cost Study, a five year research project conducted by the Urban Institute’s National Center for Charitable Statistics and the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.
The article provoked quite a reaction in me. I’ve worked as a senior manager in the non profit sector for quite a few years and felt those starvation pangs on a regular basis.
I’m involved with the Harm Reduction Coalition of York Region. I became involved when I was a Program Manager with Street Kids International and managed the Streetjibe – addressing youth poverty in York Region program. I’m staying involved as an independent business representative that cares deeply about the kind of community I live in.
Harm reduction is a big word covering a lot of ground. For me it’s about seeing and being with the person, not the harm. It’s also about fostering a compassionate, caring, inclusive community were we don’t lock up people or stigmatize people for their struggles as a human being. Read more…
Business, Learning Community, Presentation, Research, networks
If your organization is interested in learning how best to harness the power and reach of web 2.0 engagement tools, you have a conference to attend.It’s the Social Tech Training 2009 conference hosted at the MaRS Centre in downtown Toronto. The conference is the second one hosted by Web of Change organization and a group of partner organizations including Communicipia and Social Innovation Generation @MaRS.
You can learn more about this major event by visiting the registration page. Please note that this conference is a feature event during Net Change, a week long event embracing social tech training and social change makers. Dates for this event are: June 10 – 12, 2009. Read more…
Business, Learning Community, Presentation, Research, Uncategorized, networks, purpose
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. Read more…
The world of marketing is changing click by click. Organizations and businesses that continue with slick (and often not so slick) ad campaigns to convince consumers that their product is the best are finding out their customers are looking elsewhere. A video that illustrates how consumers are “not buying the slick add messages has received a lot of attention.
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