November, 2006

While the poppy-less Jon Snow sparked a controversy last week, the Royal British Legion produced their first ever podcast designed to encourage a new generation of supporters to “pause and remember”.

The charity seems keen to shift the public’s perception of its work and encourage understanding of its all year round relevance. The podcast is seen as a way to bridge the generation gap and appeal to those who did not have the time, or feel attracted, to attend a traditional Remembrance ceremony on either Armistice Day, or Remembrance Sunday.

The Remembrance podcast, which was recorded at last year’s Festival of Remembrance, features the Queen’s trumpeters playing the Last Post and the Reveille, with recitals of two traditional poems.

While the quality isn’t great, the short tribute intriguingly includes two full minutes of silence.

The Legion tell me that between the 9th - 12th November, their podcast was downloaded 1,500 times - mainly in the UK and US, but also in Iraq, Japan, and the United Arab Emirates.

Among other UK charities experimenting with podcasts are Cancer Research UK and Help the Aged, who used their podcast to invite listeners to send in their stories which the charity can use for campaigning purposes.

Photo: Hobvias Sudoneighm on Flickr

It’s a particular crusade of mine to encourage not-for-profits to identify an internal champion (or recruit a virtual volunteer) to take on this role. Call it what you will, and David Wilcox and Beth Kanter, have both had a go at (re)inventing job labels. I like Beth Kanter’s “Social Media Coach”. But how about “Cause Evangelist”? Anyway, you get the idea.

Interest in social media among not-for-profits right now is high. A good many are researching good practice and developing their strategies for participating in and monitoring social networks and the blogosphere.

With this in mind, I thought I’d have a stab at unpicking the role of “buzz director” (or whatever). What follows reflects my belief that social media is more of a creative discipline than a technical one:

• Before you get your feet to comfortable beneath your desk, remember that you should maintain a 360-degree joined-up view of your organisation at all times. Work across teams and departments.
• Research the key blogs that cover the issue areas in which your organisation works, the related policy arena and other relevant topics. Find out what others are writing about your organisation.
• Talk to everybody. Listen. Make it easy for colleagues to find you, or manufacture the conditions by which serendipity is more likely to occur.
• If you see the never-ending strategic review dragging your new colleagues down, remind them of the reasons they joined your organisation in the first place. Get them passionate (and close) to your cause once again. Share their passion. Be energetic. Be useful.
• Your role is to create a buzz around your cause (and secondarily, your not-for-profit ‘brand’). But resist any desire (or pressure) to “own” the cause. Far better to identify the communities where your supporters and activists are already and join in the conversation. After all, whose cause it anyway? Again, David Wilcox hits the button:
  

  Many of the first round of tools - Web 1.0 - were linked to existing social structures and ways of doing things. Web sites would be like magazines online. Forums online would be places you went to, just like physical events. It was quite costly and difficult to create online places, so they tended to be collective rather than personal. You now need to be in all places at once.

• Get into web widgets. While you’re not in the world domination business, your own website can still be a magnet. Create something useful (e.g. your events calendar, appeal running totals) that your dispersed supporters can add to their own blogs. Beth Kanter can tell you more about widgets…
• Work with legal to write your blogging guidelines. Anticipate more scrutiny into your organisation and its work (which you should welcome) and identify the possible pitfalls. Balance risks vs the opportunities. Get ready for some tough love.
• Coach your colleagues on blogging. Help them through the inevitable rough patches. Continually give feedback on how to write, and how to be generous.
• Talk to the press office/pr/media dept and work with them to identify key bloggers and build relationships with them to get your news and stories out. Explore the options for podcasting and video from emergency locations to get across your side of the story. Blogs can be a good way to break news that the mainstream media can pick up on and amplify. Try letting people post comments to the press releases your organisation publishes online and introduce colleagues to the concept of the social media press release.
• Set up a group photo pool in Flickr to upload, tag, and share photo stories online with your activists and fundraisers. Create a unique tag and invite your fundraisers to post photos on Flickr using this same tag. Build a visual archive your organisation’s work. This will all have a cumulative effect over time.
• Take baby steps and start small by blogging around an event. Josh Hallett tells you all you need to know.
• Include blogs and social media in your next supporter survey.
• Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Don’t neglect those traditional methods that have served your organisation so well. Appearances can be misleading: the average age on MySpace is 35.
• Develop social media optimisation across all your online communications. This means working tirelessly with communications, fundraising, campaigns…
• Your role is to help colleagues to plan, deploy, monitor and refine your blogs and social media activities just as you would for any other communications and engagement tactic.
• Share what you learn with colleagues and network with people in other organisations who sit in seats like yours to identify new ways to calculate the benefits, costs and risks of blogging. Work with them to create a framework for measuring the ROI of your blogging efforts. Join the search for a new metric for engagement.
• Explore ways to keep in touch and to share ideas and insights and share links to new developments. Embrace opportunities for collaboration.
• Don’t stall on starting to use this stuff until you “know the ROI of blogs”, but continually refer to your organisation’s mission and ensure that this activity aligns with your strategic goals. Plan for 6-12 months time, but start experimenting sooner. Set realistic expectations.
• Don’t get too big for your boots and call all this a ‘project’ because it will run into the rails. Don’t call it a pilot as no one will take it seriously enough.
• Do prepare a monthly report of activity and ensure it is distributed widely within the organisation.
• Not-for-profits unwilling to consider some or all of the above, risk becoming irrelevant. How will your organisation be different in three years time?

Of course, this is only a start. Comments most welcome.

Kresta King Cutcher has been posting images to the Flickr photo-sharing community since September 2005. To date, her images have been viewed over 136,000 times. In May, Kresta left her tenured high school post in Arizona and enrolled on the MA of Photography program at The Arts Institute at Bournemouth in the UK. I’m among those who have been touched by Kresta’s work, so I asked her a few questions about her Flickr journey.

What impact (if any) has Flickr had on you and your work?

It’s had an enormous impact on my work. I initially posted my photographs as a way of sharing my summer 2005 trip to Africa with my friends and family. However, in the past year I’ve sold many photographs, and have donated many more to great causes like UNICEF, the UN, and the Pearl Children Care Centre in Uganda.

Developing contacts through Flickr has really inspired me to take my photography a step further. I am passionate about using photography to help humanitarian efforts and raise awareness of AIDS, poverty and children’s rights, especially in Africa. Flickr has enabled me to begin to do this.

Do you feel a community has built around your images?

What a great question. I think a community has formed around my images; many viewers and contacts tell me they come to my site regularly to be reminded of a world larger than their own world. I also feel this community through the regular correspondence I have with a few of my Flickr contacts. We’ve exchanged perspectives on documentary related issues, travel and equipment advice, and on topics not related to photography.

I’m also pleased to be able to steer curious viewers to other websites. Take, for example, Gregory J. Smith, founder of CARF (Children at Risk Foundation). Check out his blog for an example of how Flickr and blogs can work together. His own photography, mostly of the street children he helps shelter in Brazil, are both dignifying and beautiful. I’ve come to know some amazing humanitarians like Gregory through Flickr.

Have you seen any NGOs using Flickr?

Yes, a few. There is a group called International NGOs and I know Interplast uses Flickr, as do some NGOs that offer emergency aid to the Indian Ocean tsunami and recent earthquake victims.

What are / could be the benefits for NGOs using Flickr, e.g. storytelling, communicating with stakeholders about project work

All of the above. Flickr is an effortless and virtually free venue for NGOs to constructively share their message and mission. Through experience, I know that a photograph supported by a well-written story really can inspire a viewer to become a donor. A Flickr account can function as an “always on” newsletter through which staff ‘in the field’ can “show as they go” through their country-specific work. A donor can visit Flickr to see instantly what is being accomplished, and who is benefiting from an NGO’s work.

Just one caveat: A photograph may have very serious content, and a viewer could make a nonsensical or inappropriate comment (although this is thankfully rare). These can always be deleted.

Was there anything in particular which drew you to Rwanda?

For some time in early 2005, I had been reading about the genocide of 1994. After I finished reading Shake Hands With The Devil: Humanity’s Failure in Rwanda, I decided to visit Rwanda and teach photography to orphaned children. That first trip inspired me to rethink so much. I started a scholarship fund at the Gisimba Memorial Centre (an orphanage on the outskirts of Kigali) and I spend much of my time encouraging others to support not only the Centre, but also other orphanages, ministries, and NGOs.

As well as Rwanda, I also visited Uganda, Congo, South Africa, Mozambique, and Swaziland - all countries deeply impacted by poverty, AIDS, and conflict.

Have the organisations listed in your Flickr profile found you through your photography?

To my knowledge, they found me through Flickr - all except Orphans of Rwanda and the Pearl Children Care Centre, whom I contacted myself to share my photographs. An orphan from the Gisimba Memorial Centre (Alex, who now lives in Minnesota) discovered my photographs on Flickr about a year ago. We’ve since developed a close friendship, and have collaborated on several presentations about the orphanage where he grew up. Before my second trip to Rwanda in June of this year, Alex insisted that I contact Amon, the founder of Living Faith Ministries. He too, has also become a close friend.

• View Kresta King Cutcher’s photostream on Flickr
• Visit Beth Kanter’s blog to learn more about Flickr for Nonprofits

Photos: Kresta King Cutcher