The IDF Comes of (Web 2.0) Age
Even the Government of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have come aboard the Web 2.0 bandwagon. Learning from past mistakes and moving to correct decades of poor execution getting their message out, both organizations are proceeding rapidly to embrace the technology of the 21st Century.
By adding new weapons to their media arsenal, and largely bypassing the traditional press, they hope to achieve a leveling on the international media playing field.
First up, the IDF has launched a blog, where you can read unfiltered pretty current summaries of military actions in Operation Cast Lead - the Government is also utilizing Twitter and YouTube. Here’s more from Andrew Ian Dodge:
Israel Shakes Up the Information War
December 29, 2008, might go down in history as one of the days the mainstream media truly started to lose their grip. It was an historic day online for both social media and citizen journalists. You won’t hear about it from the mainstream media, of course, because they are probably rather peeved at the run around them directly to bloggers and social media commentators.
What was this earth-shattering occurrence you probably didn’t hear of, unless you are interested in the subject involved? Well, in fact it was two events that were part of a campaign to sidestep the mainstream media. The Israeli government and military, mindful that they are not getting a fair shake in the press virtually anywhere in the world, set up a couple of things to get to the bloggers and other online types.
First of all, Monday afternoon saw the Israeli consulate in New York hold a press conference on Twitter on their own “hashtag” stream for anyone to read and listen to…
At the same time the Israeli Defense Forces launched its own channel on YouTube to display their view of events on the ground…
It is clear that this will be the future for many organizations tired of being misrepresented in the press and of prejudiced members of the media always doing them down.
Super Jews - Episode 1: “The Package”
Chanukah begins Sunday night - are you ready - have you picked your team? You have no idea what I’m taking about?
Well, meet Team SuperJews! Captain Israel, Queen Kabbalah, Judah the Giant, Beth L, Eternal Light, and Mega Mensch.
Still clueless? Check out our previous post, Are You Ready to Be a Hero?, this great video from William Levin, of ROI120, ShaBot 6000 and “Pass the Candle” fame, and join now!
One of the major goals of the SuperJews project is “building ties to a new generation of Federation supporters and leaders while they are still young.” ColorWars is the initial vehicle the UJC is employing in this endeavor. We believe they are the first large “established” Jewish communal organization to make a concentrated effort to reach their target demographic through social media. As such, we’ll be following their progress with great interest. And as strong proponents of inclusion in our community, we will also be interested in seeing what trends begin to develop among this audience within the Federation world.
Remember SuperJews.org - for more information, to sign-up, follow the progress and more.
Giving Online, Click by Click
Technology is fundamentally changing the philanthropic landscape.
Online marketplaces, in particular, are leading the way by increasing transparency, enhancing interactivity, and reducing costs. Technology is permitting both donors and grantees to implement a host of new ideas and approaches. In some cases, these innovations merely make the current system more efficient. But in other ways, these innovations may well revolutionize the current relationships between donors and grantees.
In particular, the new philanthropy marketplaces are drawing in large numbers of new donors by enabling them to make a direct impact anywhere in the world. Thus, these marketplaces pose a real challenge to the existing top-down systems and the role of the so-called ‘expert’ in making decisions and allocating funding. In the long run, these bottom-up marketplaces may prove to be more effective than current approaches to philanthropy.
In the United States, two of the oldest and best known online marketplaces are Global Giving and Kiva. And within the Jewish world, JGooders recently launched. This week, a new initiative with a different approach premiers, Everywun, founded by San Francisco resident Dan Jacobs. Jacobs is part of a movement spearheaded by bloggers, young philanthropists and social entrepreneurs who are using the Internet to promote their favorite causes, specific needs and to raise money and awareness through viral networking.
All of these endeavors, and others, have a common thread - the use of social networking to promote the causes they believe in. Influence - and thus power - is moving to the consumer (donor) where both collectively and individually they have the ability to build their own personal networks. In the past, these individuals were likely to be influenced offline not only by family, friends and professional colleagues but by traditional and distant sources of authority. (The original Federation model, among others). Today, there is a definite, and accelerated, movement to closer and more personal sources of contact which in addition to the former include shared interest networks.
The Internet and other forms of social media have made these connections, these self-selected communities, far more accessible. It is this twist that allows every small donor to make a personal choice. That in-and-of itself is radical.
Prepare Now and Think Creatively
from the Nonprofit Technology Network:
How Will Your Nonprofit Raise Money in 2012?
With the global financial crisis at its peak and a recession looming, many nonprofit managers are probably asking themselves, “How will my nonprofit raise money next year?” I suspect fewer fundraisers are asking themselves, “How will my nonprofit raise the money it needs four years from now?”…
Raising money in 2012 will require creativity and foresight. Micro-philanthropy — that ambiguous term that refers to all things socially networked, small-scale, and charitable — will have matured…
Over the next four years, innovative organizations will use technology to transfer to individuals the reins on everything from program work and evaluation to fundraising and communications. Raising money in a micro-philanthropic environment will come naturally to these groups.
The Advantages of New Technology
New Media Fundraising
New interactive technologies are swiftly becoming a key element in the fundraising mix. Innovations generated during the last decade include Internet applications, mobile technologies and interactive television. Charities are now gearing up to use some of them in their fundraising programs. This article provides a summary of the most important new technologies, their features, and their advantages for fundraising.
Internet
It’s now been little more than ten years since the Internet, and especially the worldwide web, really became part of our daily lives. Ever since, more and more non-profit organizations have started using this medium; clearly, the Internet is changing philanthropy. By using the Internet, charities can reach a large number of people at relatively low costs and they’re finding more convenient ways to carry out fundraising by means of computers. Two specific features of the Internet – websites and e-mail – have contributed to online fundraising. But these are not the only two ways that charitable causes can apply the Internet.
Presidential Elections 2.0
America is voting - and one thing for sure, regardless of who wins, the American political system will never be the same. For one, following the staggering amount of money raised by Obama, public financing of elections is dead. Kaput. Zeh-who.
But what is more interesting from our perspective, and we have already started to hear some analysis, is the significant use of the Internet and social media tools in this election. What began as a (successful) experiment by Howard Dean in 2004 has been raised to an art form and fundamentally changed by the Obama organization.
According to a story by Adam Nagourney in today’s The New York Times:
“The year campaigns leveraged the Internet in ways never imagined. The year we went to warp speed. The year the paradigm got turned upside down and truly became bottom up instead of top down.
It has rewritten the rules on how to reach voters, raise money, organize supporters, manage the news media, track and mold public opinion, and wage — and withstand — political attacks, including many carried by blogs that did not exist four years ago.”
And let us all not forget YouTube and the influence it has played - and helped connect those of us living overseas to the nitty-gritty of the political races. (more…)
YouTube Your Way to New Supporters
I recently spent some time on YouTube searching for examples of great video story telling. One aggregator site on the YouTube nonprofit channel makes it easy to post your nonprofit videos and easy for viewers to find them. I found “Story of a Sign,” a powerful, poignant story of a Mexican street beggar there. I like it and the video “Invisible Children” because both videos demonstrate the power of the medium to tell a story and motivate people to action. “Story of a Sign” is linked to Karmatube which helps you get involved with the cause behind the video.
Other good examples of YouTube nonprofit video successes are Taglit Birthright Israel, Greenpeace, and The March of Dimes. According to their YouTube profiles, they have each captured thousands of viewers and many new advocates. For Birthright Israel, YouTube is a natural place to engage young adult Jews and keep the energy of their Israel experience alive beyond the trip itself.
YouTube’s nonprofit channel is growing as organizations realize the cost/benefit ratio makes it worth the investment. (more…)
Is Your Website Tired?
from Fundraising Success Magazine:
You Might Need to Redesign Your Web Site If …
For most businesses and organizations, a Web site started out as an online billboard or brochure. As technology has changed — and it has done so at breakneck speed the last several years — Web sites have become online locations where audiences expect to get real services and take actions important to them.
“Modernizing” your Web presence — particularly if it involves multiple sites, complex e-commerce applications or extensive libraries of content — can be a long, costly (and sometimes painful) experience…
But how do you know whether it is time to redesign your Web site? Less than two years ago, a thoroughly modern Web site could ignore things with names like social media and RSS, accessibility and search engine optimization; it could do without Flash-based animation and “rich media”; it added new content weekly, if that often. It had no blog. When content needed to change, a technician was called in to work magic with HTML code.
But things have changed … and keep changing, almost daily it seems. What appeared up to date yesterday, today can seem so “yesterday”.
How Much Time Does Web 2.0 Take?
In the work we do with various organizations, we constantly come across staff not properly understanding the time factor involved to both have and properly maintain a social media presence. We first posted about this in August, in Don’t Underestimate the Staff Factor. As the economy moves ever southward, it is even more important to maintain a handle on expenses.
Here’s a great image we came across to help re-enforce the time commitment needed for various levels of social media involvement along with a link to lessons learned by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum through their projects.
source: Beth Kanter, How Much Time Does It Take To Do Social Media?
Viral Fundraising - an Organic Phenomenon
It’s contagious. It’s bringing in new donors and extra funds. But it’s unpredictable and hard to control. It’s viral fundraising - when a story, e-mail, video, call to action or event catches fire online and is passed from person to person, creating a wave of response and giving. “It could be an e-mail. It could be a social network. It could be a video on YouTube. So when you use the term ‘it went viral,’ it merely means that people told their friends about it via word-of-mouth,” explains Madeline Stanionis, CEO of Watershed, a San Francisco-based online fundraising and advocacy company.
Read more: 5 Ways to Promote Viral Fundraising from Target Marketing magazine.
