Over the past couple weeks I have noticed how personal the Non-Profit Organizations are. The people who work for them and help to fund these organizations give their all. I have enjoyed seeing people following CHARISM on both Facebook and Twitter. The balance of when to post what gets a little tricky especially with three group members. Being emotionally invested in these organizations is how funding happens and I have realized how important it is to become emotionally invested in order for this organization to thrive. The people who work for Non-Profit Organizations do not just work an eight to five job, they live thier job even when they go home. The positive atmosphere with these organizations is key for them to keep on trucking along and the people who work in these organizations are especially strong individuals. In working with CHARISM I have seen the passion for the kids through discussions with Melissa and would not mind helping an organization like this in the near future. Thus far it has been great to learn more about the organization and realize that Non-Profit Organizations are such a loving community.
My take
Here is what I took away from the second half of Network Nonprofit!! There was an aspect that was relevant to a camp I have been working with!
Nonprofit Funding
Throughout these last few chapters of The Network Nonprofit there was a consistent theme which dealt with audience analysis. The first chapter talking about crowd sourcing and the effects of crowds and how to talk to crowds as well as how the unpredictability can have an effect on companies. The next chapter entitled “Learning Loops” and discussing the way that we can analyze the tracking and by how many people are interacting with nonprofit organizations whether it be through
The last chapter really hit home for me because of a nonprofit organization that I have been involved with that is looking for money to get up and rolling. This chapter discusses how to go from friending to funding. The idea of just asking people for money is not a reasonable idea because of the amount of money needed to get this organization up and on its feet. They want have their own camp site for the summer months for kids ages 4th through 8thgrade to go to a Catholic based camp. As they have been trying to get started with raising money and realizeing how much money is necessary for this camp and realizing that donations of twenty to thirty dollars are good donations but thousands of dollars is the amount they have to shoot for from donors. Over the course of time they have realized that they have to be making friends with people and then ask for donations after a relationship has been established. Cold calling people who might be interested and asking for donations might work, however, to maintain a positive relationship a donation from those who willingly give will be more effective. The last idea is followers becoming donors and with the crowd f kids that are brought in each year to attend these camps keeping in contact and remaining a part of these kids’ lives as they grow up will be an effective way to maintain positive relationships and hopefully gain more donors.
Just a couple points!
The reading for this week was jam packed with information, but I elaborated on just a couple points.
My take on the chapters for this week!
What a read this week was! After these five chapters I will just hit a couple key points that I thought stuck out to me.
In part one “How to Become a Networked Non-profit” there were many good key points that I noticed and will go through as to why I thought they were important especially with CHARISM. One of the terms used in the book was “clusters” which is people who are connected with each other but not branching out. By branching out non profit organizations will only increase the name getting out into the public. While making these relationships, organizations should keep social capital in mine. What social capital does is it builds trust and meaningful relationships. Within social capital and clusters there is network weaving that should happen strengthening and building social networks.
The idea of transparency is one that is tricky to encorporate, I think. Transparency in an organization is a good idea for people to become more comfortable with the organization. With posts on websites like wikis where people from the organization can edit and add to posts to make it more accurate and current, transparency in an organization can be easier. One of the sections in the reading says “change is hard” and I think that it is true especially with non profit organizations because of the funding aspect. Some non profits receive a lot of funding and some struggle and by changing where they post blogs, it can be tricky for them to know if it will be effective. The fear of social media is one way that non profits are afraid of change because of the message it could portray. Some examples of how non profits might be portrayed on social networking cites is by looking unprofessional, not being able to monitor comments that may be negative, and not hitting the right audience by being on social networking sites. Another distinction that may be hard is finding the difference between personal and professional use on social networking sites.
Other material I learned from these chapters really had a lot to do with Kate’s video blog. Check out my comments on there!!
First encounter with CHARISM
The meeting with CHARISM went great. It was interesting talking to the Melissa and getting a feel on why they use social media. Discussing how much work she does with CHARISM was impressive with various jobs that she takes on plus trying to keep up with updating Facebook and occasionally YouTube. The interesting part of CHARISM is that they have waivers signed for the kids who attend any events to put their pictures up on Facebook. With this organization we learned a lot not only of what they do with their social media websites but also the time dedicated to the organization. Non-profit organizations really care about what they are doing and it was pleasant talking with Melissa about CHARISM. Because she was open with us about the organization I felt that it will be a great experience to work with her and get CHARISM out there and the name more recognizable.
My take on Kate
I thought that there were MANY aspects of Kate’s blog that were relevant to the non-profit we will be working with. The two I thought the most interesting were listening and goals!
Kate is great.
The organization needs to learn about using social media in a professional developmental way. I think it is easy to know and understand how to use social media in a personal way but to use it in a professional way can become tricky because of the language that is normally used on social media. The language that is normally used in social media is the furthest thing from professional, however, integrating non-profits into social media is a great way to reach out to a younger audience to get them involved.
Listening is a key idea that Kate talked about. This idea is a smart idea for the non-profit organization to be aware of how their organization is perceived. One way to do this is by attending events and getting to know the people in the organization and those who are connected to the organization to get a feel for their perceptions of the organization and what it means to them.
Kate also talked about goals that should be integrated on and offline. Partnering up with CHARISM will be a great way to experience and help the organization to create more visibility in the community about CHARISM. By creating goals, we need to remember that they need to be sustainable without us being there. We also need to be present on a small number of social media if we want to help them remain active and not pseudo present by auto posting which can be deceiving.
What a read!
I was pleasantly surprised by the flow of the first two chapters of The Networked Nonprofit by Beth Kanter and Allison H. Fine. It was a great intro and learned quite a bit about nonprofits through this read.
In anticipation to have a face to face meeting with CHARISM I find it interesting what the book points out to be myths that social media is portraying. I will go through them and say why I think these are myths and what they have to do with CHARISM. These myths include: Our constituents aren’t online. The information for CHARISM that I found was online and although meeting with the people from CHARISM I am sure there will be traditional paper information I will receive, online was where I accesed first. Face-to-face isn’t important anymore. This myth is so far from the truth because it is through face-to-face that we will get to know the people and create a real relationship and become more inclined to helping this organization. Social media isn’t core to our work. Because CHARISM seems to be targeting volunteers, using social media is important especially with targeting college aged audiences to help out. Using social media is hard. Although social media may not be easy to use right away, like anything else, practice makes perfect and by using social media it will only get easier and more effective for the organization. Using social media is time-consuming. Because now days social media can be linked to other social media, the time-consuming aspect of social media does not have to be true.
The second chapter of The Network Nonprofit was interesting especially in the idea of the Millenials which are “people born between the years 1978 and 1992.” The idea of targeting the millenials is great and I found this to be interesting because I fall into this category and how I am in the generation that is a “donor bases for traditional organizations.” In reading this chapter with the twitter event and how free agents have been used to help with nonprofits.
I am looking forward to continue reading about nonprofits and working with CHARISM while learning about nonprofits.
Assessment of CHARISM’s Web Use
Assessment of CHARISM’s Web Use.
Assessment of CHARISM’s Web Use
– current page is well-organized, regularly updated
– only 288 likes
– 1. institute a Facebook campaign to gain more likes
– 2. connect with volunteering organizations on campus/tri-college, Fraternities and Sororities, and community volunteering organizations
– change from local business to nonprofit organization
– prep for timeline by adding banner (similar to website)
– change dimensions of profile pic so CHARISM is readable as a small thumbnail pic
– connect with other nonprofits (groups to join, other organizations to like)
II. TWITTER
– create an account (designed similar to Facebook/website)
– will set up account, but will not ever post on behalf of CHARISM
– only to gather followers and follow organizations/individuals
– will pass on login information to appropriate individual within organization
– utilize twitter to connect with other nonprofits
– reach out to younger individuals
– minimal time requirement (transfer tweets to Facebook?)
– institute twitter campaign
– utilize current Facebook users
– post about CHARISM through our personal Twitter accounts
III. WEBSITE
– very effective and visually interesting
– utilize to connect with Facebook and Twitter
– currently have Facebook button at bottom of homepage
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