Editor's Note: Shonali Burke recently let me know about some exciting public relations work she is doing for the nonprofit Center for Community Change and connected me with Zack Langway, its digital campaign director. Zack is also the digital campaign director for its nonprofit sister organization, the Campaign for Community Change. Both organizations are doing some innovative work using social media for grassroots organizing of low-income people and people of … [Read more...]
KONY 2012 – Finally a Realistic Theory of Change
March 29, 2012 by
Reprinted with permission from the Peace for Sale blog. For background on this post, please see the earlier The making and breaking of KONY 2012 Peace for Sale blog post. The Enough Project has worked with Funny or Die to produce a pretty funny short film. It's a parody on KONY 2012 with a call to action. The action, however, does not claim to end a war – its goal is to build awareness and to inspire people to send the letter below to President Obama. This is a … [Read more...]
Thanksgiving Message: Gratitude, Love & Blue Keys
November 24, 2011 by
"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend." —Melody Beattie Even in tough times like these, we all can count our blessings on Thanksgiving. We can be thankful for our family, the accident of our birth in a nation with abundant food and water, and a roof over our head. We … [Read more...]
‘I’m Gonna Be Your Friend’: A Model Campaign
August 9, 2011 by
I absolutely love Save the Children's new social media campaign harnessing the power of celebrities and a Bob Marley song to raise funds for the devastating food crisis affecting millions of children and their families across East Africa. The "I'm Gonna Be Your Friend" campaign, which kicked off today, is named after the "I'm gonna be your friend" lyric in Marley's 1973 song "High Tide Or Low Tide." Using the moving song as the soundtrack to a YouTube video slide … [Read more...]
Panhandler’s Viral Hit Is ‘Dragonfly Effect,’ Not a Fluke
January 8, 2011 by
If you think the YouTube-catapulted rise of Ted Williams—the now-famous homeless man with the "golden voice"—is a fluke, you should read The Dragonfly Effect, by author-couple Andy Smith and Jennifer Aaker. The book is a must read for anybody interested in using social media to drive social change. It's full of big strategies, small tips, and real-life success stories proving you don’t need money or power to inspire seismic change in a Web 2.0 world. All you need … [Read more...]
Don’t Merge Your Facebook Page & Places Page
December 18, 2010 by
"Don't Merge Your Nonprofit Facebook Page with Places Page," warns the heading of an interesting Dec. 17 guest post on Beth's Blog. The post, by Ivan Boothe, explains if your organization accepts Facebook's invitation to claim your Facebook Places geolocation page, you'll lose your ability to specify a default landing tab on your regular Facebook page. That means all the time and money you put into creating a beautiful custom landing tab will go to waste. Since … [Read more...]
Cookie Monster, Social Influence & Crowdsourcing
November 27, 2010 by
Tweets about watching a Cookie Monster audition video to help him land a gig hosting SNL started showing up in my Twitter stream this week. While I typically tweet about things like old and new media, public relations, and Montessori, I couldn't resist retweeting the plea. Yes, you read that right. A Montessori mom who doesn't let her 3-year-old watch television, including Sesame Street, was one of the people who helped Cookie Monster's video reach 1 million views … [Read more...]
Video Clip of the Month: KFC Pinkwashing Parody
November 1, 2010 by
My November 2010 video clip of the month is an oldie but goodie. It's a parody of last spring's “Buckets for the Cure” fundraising partnership between KFC and Susan G. Komen for the Cure. The low-tech, cheaply produced parody video, by Greg and Lou, a New York City comedy duo, received 10,795 hits on YouTube as of Nov. 1, 2010. This is more than both of KFC's high-tech and presumably expensive-to-produce "Buckets for the Cure" campaign videos: KFC Employees Do the … [Read more...]
Social Media: Democracy’s Ruin or a Better Planet?
September 23, 2010 by
With summer over and more time to read in the rainy fall days ahead, I decided to finally buy The Networked Nonprofit: Connecting with Social Media to Drive Change, a book by Beth Kanter and Allison Fine that I've been meaning to read since it came out in June. So I drove to the nearest Borders, but it didn’t have the book. Then I drove to Barnes & Nobles. It wasn’t there either. Then I remembered the words of Jacques Ellul in Propaganda: The Formation of … [Read more...]
‘Special Sauce’ for Online Contest Success
July 15, 2010 by
The special recipe networked nonprofits use to win online contests was revealed in a video the Case Foundation posted on its website last week. The video features Beth Kanter and Allison Fine, authors of The Networked Nonprofit: Connecting with Social Media to Drive Changet, with research on the successful social media strategies of contest winners. It also features Scott Beale from the Atlas Service Corps, a nonprofit which has won five online competitions and … [Read more...]
Video Clip of the Month: Social Media for Good Causes
April 1, 2010 by
My April 2010 video clip of the month features Beth Kanter giving a 40-minute presentation on how non-profits can use social media to promote their causes and raise funds. Kanter is the author of Beth’s Blog, one of the longest running and most popular blogs for non-profits. Here's the YouTube video: … [Read more...]
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