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?

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.

In 2010 I will be hosting workshops for organizations that are re-tooling or aligning their online communication strategy to enhance responsiveness, trust and relevance to their stakeholders.

My goal is to initiate a bottoms up, learning and discovery process that will help organizations identify their best starting points for establishing their online communication strategy.

I believe that non profit organizations can increase their resilience, capacity and sustainability in the face of rapid change and ever decreasing resources by utilizing well thought out online strategies.

It’s a simple fact that consumers and supporters expect more from organizations via online tools and online access to resources. Non profits need to go where their constituents are and that is increasingly online.

My starting point is that caring relationships, opportunities for meaningful participation and genuine communication with supporters, consumers and donors fuels an organization’s resilience. These dimensions need to be examined internally by key staff and then the findings can be organized into an online strategy that is delivered through the organization’s web site.

In the workshop, staff will be engaged in a discussion and a shared learning process in which an online strategy can begin to take shape. This bottoms up approach taps into the organizations creativity and wisdom. Once the online strategy is in place and the most appropriate social media tools are implemented the organization begins a process of listening, learning and adapting to the new culture and environment they are inhabiting.

Supporting this transition to a strategic online communication strategy is the demise of high cost web sites that do little to further relationships with supporters, donors and consumers. Furthermore, organizations are spending huge amounts of money to pay outside contractors to make the simplest of content changes on their site.

Today, affordable open source web platforms that allow staff to upload content are putting the ownership and controls back into the hands of organization. The days of static, one way brochure web sites, controlled by expensive outside contractors are coming to a close.

What follows is a list of preliminary outcomes that I envision flowing from the workshop.

• More dynamic and trusting relationships with consumers, supporters and staff;
• Enhanced innovation, collaboration and creativity amongst staff ;
• Increased responsiveness and decision making in a climate of rapid change & diminishing resources;
• Greater alignment of your online communications with the core values and services of your organization

Please stay tuned for more news about this workshop opportunity in the new year. If you have any questions about booking a workshop now rather than waiting for my formal workshop flyer, I would be pleased to have a conversation with you.

Related Posts:

Building Better Relationships in Your Non Profit – Canadian Data Released

21st Century Media Literacies

Cooking up a Collaboration Web Site with Drupal and Open Atrium

Social Web Platforms for Non Profits – Our Approach

Preparing a feast is a great metaphor for building a dynamic web site and integrating a client’s social media strategy into the site building process. My partner Alain (from iAutomate) and I have prepared for our roles as head chefs by accumulating collectively over 40 years of experience in the IT and social benefit sector. Our business focuses on supporting non profits in using collaborative web platforms and online communication strategies to engage their audiences.

We clearly heard from our client that a combination of solid informative content, membership opportunities plus collaboration options were needed for this web site. All of us, client team, my partner and I put the broad brush strokes to a plan that would achieve these outcomes. Essentially we were aiming to marry the web site architecture with the social media strategy and mix in the right content to present to the public for viewing and participation.

The feast would not be possible without the right equipment. Think of our kitchen as the Drupal web platform and Open Atrium as our preparation room. In the Drupal kitchen we are able to put all our ingredients togerther in readiness for the grand opening. Open Atrium, our prep room is where master chef Alain and Brent collaborate with the sou chefs, our clients, on what the feast will look like and achieve.

Drupal is a free open source content management system (CMS) and contains core features that can be further extended by developers. Open Atrium is a Drupal extension that has become very popular in the web site development community, particularly as a means for collaboration as the site is constructed and also as a space were clients can learn how to manage their content management system. Open Atrium is demonstrating itself to be a great platform in its own right for groups of people or organizations to collaborate on issues or projects.

We have two main chefs. There is Alain who handles all the design and development requirements. Brent deals with merging and implementing the web communication strategy with the web site architecture. Then we have the client team of three dedicated staff (sous chefs) who tell us what they want their meal (content) to look and taste like. Their role is very critical as they know their audience best. They want their feast to appeal to their visitors taste, not their own. Furthermore, they want the feast to be so appealing, their users and supporters will come back for seconds and even start cooking their own dishes (collaborating). These 3 sous chefs taste the dishes as they are cooking and make suggestions to improve the final production.

So, the feast preparations are at a midway point. Before we call everyone to the table, we need to organize the content that will go in the site. To organize the contents and all the dishes, Alain and I have created a site content map that will lay out the key topic areas (dishes) that the sou chef staff have identified as the most important elements in the feast. With this site map, the content items including the most important documents, stories, calendars, and anything the sou chefs decides to be in the feast will be organized and put in their appropriate place.

This feast preparations are at a midway point. The social media strategy that will guide the communication and invitations to the guests and visitors is becoming more clear. Soon we will have agreement on the web site design. Special custom features will be created to give the site it’s unique identity. The planning and collaboration activities stored within Open Atrium are finnaly coming to fruition.

In a few weeks Alain and I will share with our readers more about how the feast is coming together. I’ve heard from other web site and social media strategists that launching a new web site is akin to a death march. We don’t like that metaphor because we believe the key to cooking great dishes and creating great web sites that work, is the positive energy that is poured into the creation and collaboration process. No doubt, mistakes will be made. Adapting and learning from these mistakes will make our feast even better. How we work through these mistakes as a collaborative team will help the sou chefs carry on after our role is complete.

In our next post we will show you our fancy cutlery, table cloth, invitation cards and some of those custom features that we expect will make our feast memorable for our clients and all their stakeholders.

Stay tuned for the next chapter of Cooking up a Collaboration Web Site with Drupal and Open Atrium in a few weeks time.

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.The Harm Reduction Coalition is hosting a series of learning and awareness building events that bring new and hopefully greater acceptance of harm reduction policies and practices into our York Region services. Last week we held our first “building awareness event” and we had 3 guest speakers. Tom Rigehr, survivor, writer, founder of CAST Canada, Cathy Middleton, Director of Women’s Services from YWCA Kitchener-Waterloo and David Collins, President and founder of the the Toronto Harm Reduction Task Force. Through this event and others like we are working towards making York Region a more caring inclusive community.

In this video, Dave Collins gives a great overview of the evolution of harm reduction practices and policies in Toronto. I have video of Tom and Cathy but the quality just isn’t as good as they moved around quite a bit and I didn’t have an audio feed to work with.

Related Posts:

Strengthening Practice: Building Resiliency with Learning Networks

Extend Your Messenge & Include the Messengers

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.Last summer, I attended the first Social Tech Training Conference (STT) and the experience changed my life. I’ve attended many learning events over the past twenty years but none like this.

The STT 2008 conference brought together so many talented and creative people from all over North America to share knowledge and strategies for using web 2.0 tools for social change. From that experience, I decided to invest my energies and creativity into working with organizations as a social media consultant.

I’m so pleased to have participated in this training. The community that evolved from STT 2008 continues to be a source of inspiration and guidance as I work with local York Region organizations seeking more effective ways to engage their constituents.

Here is a short advomentary that highlights the STT 2008 Conference.

Social Tech Training Advomentary from MaRS Discovery District on Vimeo.

Related Posts

Social Tech Training 2008

Over 350 people attended the National Mental Health Week – On the Road of Recovery event at the Newmarket Theatre on April 8th, 2009. From my perspective, the event was a resounding success . I think what made the event so successful was the careful planning and collaboration of the sponsoring organizations and the representation throughout the day of the rich and genuine voices of consumer survivors.

I was very pleased that Social Media Tools for Work & Learning was given permission to film the event. We offered not only to film the main presenters but also staff and consumers about what the day meant for them. In addition to the dynamic presentations given by Bill MacPhee, CEO/Founder of the Schizophrenia Digest and the Stand Up for Mental Health comedy troupe, we have over twenty interviews that will be added to the final DVD.

All of the sponsoring organizations will be given a master DVD copy that they can use to share with staff and consumers who were not able to attend the event. They can also re-purpose the DVD for staff/volunteer training purposes or reaching their stakeholders by posting the DVD on their web site. Once we complete the post production editing process, I will post the full DVD on my site.

The sponsoring organizations included: Canadian Mental Health Association-York Region; York Support Services Network; Krasman Centre; Loft – Crosslinks; Addiction Services for York Region.

This photo slide show and the interview above will give you a flavour of the day. You can see how using inexpensive equipment can still give good quality results. Please leave a comment if you would like to continue extending the conversation.

A slide show that illustrates how interviews are added into our film.

BubbleShare: Share photos – Play some Online Games.

by CowGummy

Many non profit organizations are becoming increasingly aware of the benefits of using technology to address their communication and capacity building goals. Unfortunately, they often become turned off and frustrated because of their unfamiliarity with the plethora of social media tools available and how to appropriately integrate these tools into their organization.  One of the non profit organizations that I was involved with was asked by their funder to explain why a new web site was needed when a web site was built 2 years ago. My colleagues asked me to put together a “fact sheet” or talking points to help explain to the funder what was different between the proposed web site and what was built 2 years previous.

I enjoyed putting this list together because it helped me explain in plain language what having a web 2.0 site will look like as opposed to the brochure sites that are the default style of so many organizations in the non profit sector. My list doesn’t include an outline or explanation of conducting an online communication strategy that will guide the web site design and development. I will save that for a post next week. I am sure there are pieces that may be added to the list. If you see anything I omitted, please leave a comment.

20 Reasons for Funding a Web 2.0 Non Profit Web Site

1. We will have a in-house user friendly content management system (CMS), making it simple and easy for updating core text or core content (About page, Programs, Staff list etc) posting relevant news, activities & documents from Governments, Agencies, practitioners to individual residents of our Region;

2. We will have a CMS that increases our responsiveness, relevance, collaboration, advocacy and support with our constituents. (including dissemination of various government reports, call for proposals and feedback from our constituents to government policy makers and administrators);

3. We will have a robust and user friendly data base component to the CMS that will make registration and membership to the organization and its activities easy and manageable for those signing up as well as for in-house staff that collate and use this data;

4. We will have a web site designed to encourage visits, find resources and participate;

5. We will have a web site easy that is inviting, appealing, atheistically pleasing, creating a sense of comfort and an ease of navigation;

6. We will have a web site that utilizes Google analytics to enable us to accurately measure the effectiveness of our web site. These metrics will be matched against our goals and strategies, allowing us to monthly reassess the placement of content and links;

7. We will have a web site designed to utilize web 2.0 tools to allow for communities and individuals to connect with and dialogue with the organization;

8. We will have a support person for any technical aspect related to the site;

9. We will have a site that is search engine friendly to increase online exposure of the organization and traffic to the site (search engine optimization (SEO) strategies);

10. We will have a person facilitating the drafting of our online communication strategy and the coordinating the first phase of determining and implementing the most appropriate communication tools for our diverse audiences;

11. We will have a person training in-house staff on the use of the CMS and the fostering and supporting of online dialogue with individuals and local Regional communities, Agencies, etc.

12. We will have a dynamic platform, rich in a variety of social media tools (web 2.0) that will exemplify and demonstrate the benefits of using technology to strengthen the local Regional non profit community;

13. We will, with this experience and knowledge, be able to facilitate other local agencies in adopting similar online strategies for serving their community;

14. We will have the best communication tool available to address the disconnection amongst marginalized and homeless (at risk of) residents and the organizations serving these families and individuals;

15. We will have a on line presence that allows the organization to offer a supportive online environment where constituents (Agencies, residents, consumers of services etc) a means to have questions answered, learn how to survive with less resources, build partnerships and collaborations, provide timely feedback from residents to different levels of government;

16. We will have a site that we can grow and adapt to the changing complexities of our community

17. We will create transparency, opening the doors and windows to the organization;

18. We will have the necessary online tools to address the complexities of rapid change in our communities and the ongoing uncertainty of working within a non profit sector (system) where short term funding practices foster a disconnect between organizations and practitioners;

19. We will have a site that can assist in generating new funding opportunities and sources;

20. We will have a site that we are proud of and that we have ownership of;

Do you have more benefits that can be used to explain to funders why you need their support to strengthen your Mission and operations through a web 2.0 web site? Please leave any of your thoughts or ideas.

Thanks to Alain at iAutomate for bouncing around ideas with me for this post.

Related Posts:

I found this post on Luis Suarez’s set elsu.net. Luis is an IBM Knowledge Management specialist and a brillant blogger that I enjoy reading. The video is of CEO John Chambers of Cisco Systems and he is interviewed by Harvard Business School Publishing. John speaks elequently about the shift from a “command and control” model of doing business to a more open, transparent, collaborative and teamwork like environment where social computing is a central approach to conducting business.

I liked this interview because it illustrates the value of collaboration and the use of social networking tools to achieve significant results in a multi billion dollar company. If CISCO can do this in a highly structured bureaucracy, perhaps our non profit and educational sector groups can see the wisdom of adopting social media, networking and collaboration tools to tap into the strengths of its people and Mission. CEO Chambers makes a strong statement about the necessity of organizations to utilize the power of web 2.0 to improve performance and address the realities of our global interconnectedness.