I attended the 2007 Nonprofit Technology Conference in Washington DC last week (April 5, 6). Here are some notes and highlights from the sessions I attended.

Session 1: What Technology Can Do for Your Mission

Interesting session with Charlie Brown (Ashoka), Isaac Castillo (Latin American Your Center), and Roberto Cavlcanti (Conservation International) presenting on the way each organization has been using technology to further their mission. Charlie talked about Changemakers (Forum One helped build their current site) and how putting their competition process online has allowed innovators at the periphery to participate. Issac talked about how creating an online database of their members has helped them focus their efforts and be more accountable to their funders. Roberto talked about the technology challenges of a scaling global organization with offices in many countries. (and how an investment in teleconferencing equipment paid itself off the first time in was used due to the saving in airfare)

My take aways: First figure our what problems need to be solved then find and use technology strategically to solve them.

Session 2: What Works with Online Community

Learned nothing new that I didn't know already about how to grow and maintain an online community. Well maybe that's a little too harsh. I did learn that there are 3 types of users that participate in online communities: goal-motivated user, socially motivated user, and curious learner.

My take aways: Not much, just that adding photos next to posts increases traffic.

Session 3: Fundamentals of Storytellig in Online Communications

This was an interesting session presented by Jonah Sachs and Susan Finkelpearl, our friends at Free Range Studios, the creators of The Meatrix and Grocery Store Wars. It covered the basics of good story telling - that you need a hero (Luke Skywalker), nemesis (Darth Vader), mentor (Obi-wan), oracle (Yoda) and an animal familiar (R2-D2), and how they used these elements to produce their flash-based campaigns. The nemesis doesn't have to be someone, or an organization. It can be something within people such as, in the case of global warming, indifference, ignorance, greed, laziness etc. The best stories sometimes ends up being stories that your users tell. However you have to provide clear directives for the users to tell their stories: "who influenced your most in school?" rather than "tell us a story about your school".

They also gave a step by step guide to storytelling:

1. Identify your audience
2. Identify emotional resonant themes
3. Set the stage
4. Choose your mystery / metaphor
5. Choose your medium

The first question from the audience was interesting: "When should you not use storytelling?" I thought that Jonah answered this question well - most of what they were talking about was targeted towards the general public, however for academics or researchers who look for hard data or research, storytelling the information may not be appropriate. In short, taylor your message to your audience.

My take aways: Let your users tell the stories for you. Let your organization be the "mentor" of the story (Obi-wan), and the user be the "hero" (Luke Skywalker).

Session 4: Branding Through Websites: Building your brand from the first click

Laura Quinn (Alder Consulting) defined brand as, "your gut feeling about an organization", which is creatd by rational (e.g. what you do) and non-rational (e.g. people who hate the color red) factors. It is the external perception of your organization that is out of your control, but you can influence it. And whether you like it or not "you already have a brand."

Some exercises that get to your branding are:

1. How are you currently perceived? (be brutally honest)
2. How would you like to be perceived? (fill in the blanks)
   • "XYZ organization is so __"
   • "They are great at __"
   • "They are different because __"
3. Define answer for: (in 1 sentence)
   • What do you do?
   • Why does it matter?
   • What makes you different?

Website are a powerful and often the only way to communicate to your constituents. You have control over the following factors that influence your brand on your site:

• Statements (tone, who are you trying to reach)
• Prioritization (of homepage content, navigation, teasers)
• Graphic design (establishes professionalism, credibility, audience-centricness, topic of the site)
• Information and functionality (provide clear evidence of service)

During the session, as an exercise, the audience was divided into smaller groups and given a site to figure out what they do and who they serve. Megan, our :>Refugees International client volunteered the site for a review by the session. The comments were interesting:

• "There is no clear sense that they are an advocacy organization, and not involved in actually humanitarian relief."
• "They need to tell their [success] stories"
• "'Where we work' and 'What we do' sections need to move up on the page [above the fold]"
• "There is opportunities to put video on the site"
• "The page looks busy, too much info, hard to know where to start"
• "There needs to be more statements about impact"
• "Audience track navigation maybe?"
• "Color palette is nice"
• "Good pictures"

My take aways: You have a brand whether you like it or not. How do you make sure it is an accurate reflection of who you are?

Session 5: New Approach to Social Change: Technology and the Social Entrepreneur

Great session with Steven Clift (E-Democracy.org), Charles Best (DonorsChoose.org) and Kris Herbst (Ashoka, Changemakers), about what it means to be a social entrepreneur, applying business practices and using technology opportunistically.

Steve provided better tips for maintaining a productive community than the session I went to yesterday. On e-democracy.org he has a couple of rules:

• Sign in with real name
• Posts limited to no more than 2 times a day (excellent policy for providing everyone a chance to participate, and avert flame wars)
• Stay within scope of local charter
• 2 warning equals a 2 week suspension
• Recruit 100 registered members even before you launch (seed communities before launch)
• Auto hide email quotes (so that posts are to the point and don't get long)

Charles had a fascinating presentation of how he started DonorsChoose.org out of frustration, when he was a high school teacher in the Bronx, with $2000 of his own money (while he was living at home with his mom). In the beginning, he also had his students handwrite letters to potential donors. Teacher have great ideas, but are unable to get funding, so DonorsChoose.org provides a platform for the teachers to submit proposals for school activities and for people who wish to fund a project to be "confident" about the project they are funding, by doing the background research for them, and providing follow up emails about the project. In Charles's words:

DonorsChoose enables every public school teacher to be a social entrepreneur and every person to be a philanthropist

Donors can search projects by location, subject, grade, keyword etc. Interestingly "autism" is one of the highest search terms and despite conventional wisdom, more donors fund outside their locale.

One poignant question from the audience was, "Won't this encourage funding for education to be cut further?" Charles answered, "if that happens, we will all quit." He went on to say that a local politician who was visiting the site was outraged to find that some schools in his district didn't even have dictionaries, and caused him to act. Also surveys showed that those who donated were likely to show more interest in education issues.

The biggest challenge that DonorsChoose faces is scalability. Scaling operations means more staff, and actually studying supply chain management. Also scaling in to other states means maintaining a ground presence in each locale. Charles emphasized that "the internet is not enough."

I didn't take notes on Kris's presentation since I know what Changemakers is about, but I did ask him and the panel the question: "If you are about 'open-sourcing ideas', how do you feel about open-sourcing your platform?" Kris answered that they plan to open-source the competition module they developed in Drupal. But this is the dilemma that most social entrepreneurs must face. How do you let go and let grow an idea that you have so close to your heart?

My take aways: Social entrepreneurs are myth-busters. Muhammad Yunus (An Ashoka Fellow) broke the myth that the poor are not credit-worthy. Rapid developments and access to technology lowers the barrier and enables social entrepreneurs to tackle society's pressing problems.

Session 6: Using Online Social Networks to Build Buzz, Community and Support for Your Cause

Scott Goodstein (Catalyst Campaigns), and Heather Holdridge (Care2.com) talked about creating online buzz about your cause around new social networking sites such as MySpace and FaceBook. Heather summarized by saying:

• Be everywhere you can be, but prioritize
• Be prepared for the big moment
• Meet people where they are

Scott emphasized that it takes a lot of work to establish and maintain a presence in MySpace. Just like energy drinks (Red Bull, Jolt, Tab etc) or niche radio stations market themselves based on understanding their niche audience, so should your online campaigns be. Your organization needs to develop its "online persona."

My take aways: It is wrong to think, "If you build your MySpace page, they will come." It takes effort to understand who you are trying to reach and speak to them in their terms to create a wave of buzz.