Are you an one-person communications department? Perhaps you can relate to this chart from Gerard Matthews, Communications Director of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. As a one-person communications department, your workload, which includes doing the social media, is always increasing. Your most valuable resource, your time, is a finite resource - even if you forgo getting enough sleep which you know doesn't work to your advantage. Gerard decided to do just one that … [Read more...]
How #GivingTuesday is using Champions
Giving Tuesday hopes to spark a movement of people and organizations who want to celebrate giving and encourage more and smarter giving during the holiday season. The intent is to create an annual national day of giving on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving or this year on November 27, 2012. The campaign will encourage philanthropic activities that support nonprofit organizations. I heard about it in September and immediately signed up to be a social media ambassador which was a … [Read more...]
Digital Strategies for Community Foundations: COF Knight Digital Media Center Workshop Notes
At this year's Council on Foundations conference in New Orleans, I had the honor of doing a mini-workshop for CEOs of Community Foundations as part of a half-day pre-conference session organized by the Knight Digital Media Center called "Digital Strategies for Community Foundations." The backdrop is a movement to create "Community News Leadership 2.0" and community foundations are big players in this ecosystem. I got to hear an overview of the ecosystem work that Community Foundation for … [Read more...]
A Free Agent for Hunger: Pittsburgh Tote Bag Project
Many nonprofits, particularly smaller organizations, say their biggest challenge to using social media effectively is that they don't have the time or staff. Those that have opened themselves up to using these tools and connecting with passionate people in their networks find abundance. Here's one story about how one free agent, a social media savvy volunteer for a local food bank, saw a problem, reached out to her network, and helped solved in collaboration with the local nonprofit. Sue … [Read more...]
NTC Reflection: How To Make Your Conference Panel A Magical Learning Experience
As many trainers and teachers already know, people have different learning styles. Howard Gardner has dedicated his life work to this Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Yet, many conference panels are designed to accommodate only one or two styles of learning and go shallow instead of going deep. Would participants learn more and have greater impact if panel designers incorporated different techniques such as visual learning and if they designed for more audience engagement? After all, how … [Read more...]
