Archive for April, 2008
Making A Case for Social Media Marketing
Regular visitors to eJewish Philanthropy know we believe strongly in the use of social media / social networking within our non-profit world. There are many variations for an organization to choose from; no “one size fits all” approach. Hopefully, we are encouraging you to consider the various possibilities available and pointing you in some useful directions.
Perhaps just writing a blog on your organization’s web site and monitoring comments is what will best for your non-profit. Certainly the “big” tool (and I can’t stress this enough) is the use of video. The important thing, though, we hope you will keep in mind,
any non-profit still not using social marketing tools to send out its message to its constituency is already at a large disadvantage to those non-profits that are.
Some of you may still be asking, What is this thing called “social media” and why should your organization get into it?
According to Wild Apricot:
“In a nutshell, social networking can be defined as any activity by which people connect with each other online, to collaborate, create or share information, to participate in conversations, and to build communities of common interest. Social media refers to the growing range of technological tools that make social networking possible — blogs, forums, RSS, wikis, podcasting, video, photo-sharing sites, and the list goes endlessly on.
It’s fair to say that social media is at the very heart of Web 2.0 — the democratization of the Internet — from which there can be no turning back now.”
You can read their complete post here.
While you”re at it, check out an earlier post of ours and take a test of your technoliteracy.
Facebook Publishes Insider’s Guide to Viral Marketing
Facebook messaged the 4,600 fans of the FacebookPages
Page with helpful hints on how to make your presence on Facebook go viral (by messaging all of your fans, for example).
Check out some key strategies from the most successful businesses on Pages, including:
- Regularly adding engaging and useful content
- Letting fans participate in the conversation
To read about some winning strategies—along with the nuts of bolts of how to create and manage a Page—here’s a link: Insider’s Guide to Viral Marketing
Leadership Without A Safety Net
The Spring issue of Non-Profit Quarterly is out; titled “Leadership Without a Safety Net”. Their focus in this issue is
“to draw readers away from the emphasis on strategic career development and towards a focus on leading for impact and effectiveness.”
Two articles you may find of particular interest are Gap or Pap: Generational Differences at Work and The Evolution of Nonprofit Management Programs (registration / subscription required).
Gap or Pap: Generational Differences at Work
by Jennifer J. Deal
Conventional wisdom about the dynamics of the nonprofit workplace would have us believe that a great generational shift is under way and that the up-and-coming have a fundamentally different set of values and expectations of their work environments. Enter Jennifer Deal’s recent publication Retiring the Generation GAP, a book that draws on nearly seven years of research—much of it among people working in nonprofits—regarding the generation gap. Deal argues that conflicts attributed to the generation gap are more often based on power differentials and the abuse of power. In an extensive survey of what workers in all generations value in the work environment, she finds little difference between them. The next time someone chalks up conflict to the generations, look for the power dynamics beneath.
The Evolution of Nonprofit Management Programs
by Judith Millesen
What’s new in nonprofit management education? A lot, as it turns out. Interviews with educators from programs around the country reveal a field that is experimenting with new ways to serve and adapt to student needs, to a changing nonprofit landscape, and to new technology. The interviews reflect a great deal of variation between programs as the result of different approaches to education, different populations, and resources.
Where’s the Matza?
It’s only the morning of the 3rd day of Peasach, and yet the New York Times is reporting a Matza shortage!
“To the lengthening list of comestible problems befalling our nation, add this: a matzo shortage.
From coast to coast, a shortfall of the unleavened flat cracker bread eaten by Jews during the eight days of Passover has sent shoppers scurrying from store to store in search of it.”
Read more here.
Gossip Influences Generosity
A new study at an Irish university suggests that gossip influences generosity, reports Reuters.
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Worried about what people are saying about you? Concerns about gossip could influence behavior, including generosity, researchers said.
“As it turns out, the act of gossip can indeed be quite powerful,” said Jared Piazza of Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Read more here.
Perhaps the Jewish Funders Network should pass the study details over to the Israeli philanthropists who participated in their recent Conference here in Jerusalem. See our previous post, Israeli Philanthropists: Afraid of Transparency.
The New Jewish Media
For those of you interested in keeping up with the newer and innovative publications in our Jewish world, just in time for the Pesach chag, two current issues to enjoy.
First, from publisher Ariel Beery, in his own words:
Hot off the presses — PresenTense Five Explores Israel at 60
How does our generation experience Israel at 60? For many Jews older than us, Israel at the ripe old age of 60 reminds them of stunning victories in the face of almost certain destruction, of new hope for a Jewish People emerging from the furnaces of the Holocaust, of a desert that was irrigated and made to bloom.
But for many of us, Israel at 60 is different. Our generation cannot authentically share in the memories of existential crises diverted, or of the miracle of rebirth. We are the generation born after the great victories, and during a time of much more complexity and confusion.
For us, this birthday presents an opportunity to explore what Israel means to us in the here and now—and what our role can be in shaping, advancing and improving Israel as we look towards the future.
In this special Israel@60 edition of PresenTense, contributors as diverse as Israel herself seek to process the country’s complex facets and effects in order to understand how we relate to Israel—and how Israel relates to us.
Here is what our generation has to say.
image credit: Lisa Sher, Holon Institute of Technology, for Home, an International Poster Project
Taking a very different approach in our Web 2.0 world, New Voices, a national Jewish student magazine, has devoted their entire April issue to The Radio.
This from editor Josh Nathan-Kazis:
The spring of 2008 is an odd time for a college magazine to publish a radio-themed issue. Never has radio felt less relevant. On campus, it seems like everyone has an iPod. At Duke they give them out for free. Computer speakers have replaced the boombox; cell phone alarms the clock radio. New music comes from Pandora.com and Limewire, Howard Stern comes from XM, and public radio comes from NPR.org.
Yet, we believe that it’s too early to write radio’s eulogy. The nostalgia of the anti-NPR activists at Wesleyan misses out on the vibrancy that still exists in non-commercial radio. In this issue, we offer a brief taste. We have Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman on the value of radio as independent media, Rifka Dzodin on how pirate radio shapes Israel’s political and cultural landscape, Top 40 legend Cousin Brucie on the role of the DJ, and a look at college radio’s future from Benjamin Holzman.
Major Israeli Philanthropist Speaks Out
around the Jewish media world this first morning of Chol Ha-Moed…
Donor wants more aid to Jewish cause
In a sign of the times for Jewish philanthropy, it is also serving to link up American Jewish donors and foundations with a new breed of Israeli philanthropists.
“There’s a change in the Israeli mentality. The hard years after the founding of the state taught Israeli society to schnor, to take money from America or from Europeans with guilty consciences. That mentality is changing. Israelis aren’t suffering so much anymore. There’s a small layer in society that can contribute greatly.” Now, he believes, Israeli philanthropists should take the lead in Jewish philanthropy in order to inspire overseas Jews to do the same.
“If Jews don’t give to their own, no one else will.”
(Haviv Retting speaking with Oudi Recanati in today’s Jerusalem Post)
For more on the philanthropic activity of Israelis, here from Haaretz is an excellent article published last summer: Where’s The Money?
A New Capacity Building Grant for Birthright
The Birthright Israel Foundation will be the recipient of the largest grant ever provided by the Jim Joseph Foundation. The $17.5 million gift, to be distributed over the next five years, will provide $5 million in trip support, and an additional $12.5 million as a matching grant for building community initiatives among young adults after the trip.
The program’s success has been remarkable, and that success has generated unprecedented demand from young Jewish adults to travel to Israel. Over 160,000 young Jews worldwide—110,000 of them from the North America—have participated in the Taglit-Birthright Israel trips since the program’s inception in 2000.
“It is our goal, and our hope, to allow every qualified young person who applies to have the chance to visit Israel,” says Shimshon Shoshani, CEO of Taglit-Birthright Israel. “The support of the Jim Joseph Foundation comes at a critical time as applications continue to outpace available spots this summer by a ratio of two-to-one.”
Birthright Israel’s thinking is bold and the plan the Foundation co-created with them is ambitious; a draft of which you can read here.
Along with the gift to Hillel’s Campus Entrepreneurs Initiative, the Foundation has a potential for engaging up to 100,000 young Jewish adults for whom Judaism is currently only tangentially related to their identities.
According to Chip Edelsberg, Executive Director of the Jim Joseph Foundation,
“The complementary nature of the two initiatives position the Jewish world to be responsive to realities of the “twenty-something” Jew in ways neither commonly available nor readily accessible now.
Working together, Birthright Israel, Hillel, and JJF postulate that we have designed a scalable model for invigorating the lives of young adults, ages 18-30, with Jewish content, values, and meaning.”
The Trouble With Percentage Commissions
Paying a fundraiser a commission is a controversial issue. Many professional organizations ban the practice outright in their Codes of Ethics. Here in Israel, while such is also the practice among professional fundraisers, every week advertisements appear for commission based positions in parts of our fundraising community.
From Prospecting, we bring you a recent post on the subject. We think this is a relevant and important issue in our international Jewish community. Therefore the complete post follows…
When Susan Herr ran a struggling charity, she was sometimes tempted to reward her fund raisers financially for their success, not just for their effort.
“My (desperate) thinking: I’ve got no money to hire someone and if this gal can bring in some funds, why not give her a big chunk of money I don’t think I can access anyway?,” she writes on the Philanthropomedia blog.
But Ms. Herr says that, in hindsight, she’s glad that most ethics codes prohibit fund raisers from being paid based on a percentage of the money they bring in. She encourages readers to take a look at an essay by Paulette V. Maehara, the president of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, on what she calls “the percentage problem.”
In a background paper on the issue, the association cites several reasons why percentage-based pay is a poor idea:
- The mission and long-term interests of the charity could become secondary to the fund raiser’s personal interests.
- Donors may be turned off by knowledge that the fund raiser will receive a commission on their gift.
- Fund raisers will be more focused on their own interests, and not enough on those of donors.
A poll released at the association’s annual meeting last month found that accepting commission payments is the most common ethical concern veteran nonprofit officials have witnessed.
Shabot Does Pesach
“Don’t Eat The Brown Matzah”
for more on this week’s comic strip and the cartoon archives visit