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JACQUELLINE FULLER: Welcome everybody.
It's so good to have a great turn-out today.
I'm Jacquelline Fuller, and I run Google Giving.
And it's a real pleasure today to introduce someone who's
become a friend, and is one of the leading lights of the
whole technology and social media sector.
I'm going to read a little bit from Beth's background.
So her first book, "A Networked Nonprofit,"
introduced the sector to a new way of thinking and operating
in a connected world.
She built on that in her second book, which we have
over here for sale, "Measuring the Networked Nonprofit." Got
the two biggest memes in the nonprofit movement--
measurement and networking in the same title.
BETH KANTER: And data in the subtitle.
JACQUELLINE FULLER: And data-- oh, in the subtitle.
BETH KANTER: Using data to change--
JACQUELLINE FULLER: Using data to change the world.
You should have said Big Data, and that would have been
really funny.
Awesome.
Using data to change the world.
She's also the author of one of the most popular books in
the entire nonprofit space, "How Nonprofits Can Use Social
Media."
She's got over 30 years in the nonprofit sector.
She's done training.
She builds capacities.
She's facilitating nonprofits learning about these themes of
networking and management across the globe.
She was named one of most influential women in
technology by Fast Company, and one of Business Week's
"Voices of Innovation" for social media.
She's a visiting scholar at the David and Lucile Packard
Foundation, as well.
And one last thing I want to say about my friend Beth is
that when I was having lunch with another colleague whose
in the space of technology and social impact, and said I was
going to introduce Beth, she said, oh, tell them this--
that whenever someone comes to me who is maybe new to the
sector or interested in learning more about technology
and nonprofits and social impact, the first thing she
always tells them is to follow Beth Kanter.
So with that, I'll turn it over to my friend.
BETH KANTER: Great.
Thank you, Jacqueline.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you, Jacqueline, for that great introduction.
And it's such a pleasure to be here with all of you.
And I want to give a big shout-out to the VISTA folks
who I had the pleasure of having lunch with.
And I always like talking to young people.
I've been in the nonprofit sector for 34 years.
That's how I got my start.
And 20 years ago, almost to the day, I had a front row
seat at the creation of a field--
how nonprofits can use the internet for social change.
How exciting is that?
And so, I was telling someone at lunch, I said, I've always
been driven by my curiosity.
I didn't have a brand career plan.
I just followed my passion, and followed my curiosity, and
desire to learn.
And when I started my first technology job, I didn't know
a modem from a microwave.
OK, you're supposed to laugh.
But I was able to learn from the techies, translate that,
and help activists and NGOs and non-profits learn how to
embrace this technology.
And I've been lucky to make that my calling
for the last 20 years.
And I've worked with thousands of non-profits literally on
all continents of the world, and people who are passionate
about that question of, how can we use this online
technology for social change?
And that's what drives me.
But I also have a personal passion, and a personal
commitment to service, like all of you in VISTA.
And I have a personal connection to Cambodia, and
that's why I'm contributing my royalties to spend that young
lady, [? Kio Savan ?], who's now entering her junior year
at college as a civil engineering major.
And that will change her life.
And I had an opportunity to meet her last summer.
And she said to me, Miss Beth--
she calls me "Miss Beth," sometimes "Mama"--
thank you very much for your support.
It's very important to me, but I would like to go to graduate
school in the United States, and I would like to go to MIT,
Stanford, or Harvard.
I said, OK, we'll sell a lot of books.
So I was a really, really proud that the book won this
year's Terry McAdam's Nonprofit Book Award.
It's sort of a highlight of my career.
And it was a bittersweet victory for me, because the
week that they announced the finalist, my dad, Earl Kanter,
passed away--
gave up this courageous battle with Parkinson's.
But I felt blessed that I was able to share that with one
last professional achievement with him.
And to honor his memory, I did a social fundraising at an
online event and I used--
I ate my own dog food.
I used the ideas in my book.
And so he gives us all the final lesson on how to use
these tools, and get better results.
And I'll share that with you at the end of the
presentation.
So let's get to it.
My first book, "The Networked Nonprofit," co-authored with
Allison Fine, was about how nonprofits needed to transform
themselves from nonprofits to networked nonprofits.
And the definition is that networked nonprofits are
agile, they are adaptive, they're transparent.
And they're masters at using their networks, and experts at
using social media to build relationships with
stakeholders, and to make the world a better place.
Now what I've learned in practice as a trainer and a
capacity-builder is that adapting this new way of
working happens very slowly and incrementally.
So I came up with a maturity of practice model, and it was
inspired by this Martin Luther King quote.
I keep it on my computer.
I love it.
It's, "If you can't fly, then run.
If you can't run, then walk.
If you can't walk, then crawl.
But you have to keep moving forward," OK?
So when I work with nonprofits, I see where they
are in their transformation to
becoming a networked nonprofit.
So we have the crawlers.
And there's nothing wrong with crawling.
Crawling's good.
You have to start somewhere.
How many of you are parents?
Few.
OK, when your kid started to crawl, did you say that's bad?
No, no, no.
OK, so crawling--
they may need to develop a communication strategy,
formalize it, outreach strategy, or there may be some
organizational culture issues, OK?
But then quickly, they can get to walking.
And at walking stage, they begin to link their social
media and network use with results, but they're doing it
in terms of pilots--
experimenting with one program, one campaign, or even
one channel.
And here, also, they are building incremental capacity.
Typically, I see nonprofits maybe invest up to 20 hours
per week of staff time at that walking stage.
And then there's a chasm that they cross to get to running.
That does require more staff investment.
But at this point, they have a formal ladder of engagement.
So they know how to take their supporters from passive
observers to champions for their cause.
They have a robust content and engagement strategy.
They have practice to experiment and to learn how to
apply and use new platforms and new techniques.
And they use some measurement in that-- maybe not throughout
the organization.
But to get to flying--
at the flying stage, they've built their network.
Yay-- they have many champions and influencers supporting
their work, and spreading their ideas and messages.
They have multi-channel engagement with their content,
and they are measuring those.
And they also have a formal reflection, and a continuous
improvement process throughout the whole organization.
So crawl, walk, run, fly.
And the framework that's in the book breaks down 12 best
practices in becoming a networked nonprofit, and looks
at them at different stages of maturity.
And organizations can use this to help move them one step
forward at a time.
The book, of course, takes a deeper dive into the
measurement practices.
And that's what we're going to look at right now.
So one of the big ideas in the book is about, how do you
become a data-informed nonprofit?
And notice, I'm not using the word "data-driven"--
the phrase "data-driven"--
because "data-informed" means that the organization has a
culture of measurement, and a culture of learning.
And they bring their wisdom and their data to
decision-makings.
They're not driven by the data, and they're collecting
and using the right data.
So I have three stories about nonprofits, and somehow they
all ended up being animal welfare organization.
So how many people like dogs?
OK, how many like cats?
OK, how many like other?
OK, I'm sure we don't have any animal haters in
the audience, right?
OK, so there will be a story for you.
And my first story is about an organization that I just love.
It's called DoSomething.org.
How many of you are familiar with them?
They are awesome, OK?
Their mission is to get over 15 million teens active in
social change causes.
And they are my poster child for being a data-informed
organization.
I got have an in-depth profile in the book, but what I
learned about that is that it really starts at the top.
OK, so five years ago, people on their board, like Reid
Hoffman and DJ Patil, who is the data
scientist at LinkedIn--
sat down with Nancy Loveland, who is their CEO, and sort of
said, lose your gut.
All decisions should be based on saying, what
does the data say?
But they didn't just say that.
They talked to her about building the infrastructure
and the culture for that to happen.
Now what's really amazing, if you go and visit
DoSomething.org at their office in New
York, you will discover--
even though they have a somewhat small staff in the
nonprofit sector--
that they have three full-time data scientists on staff.
And those data scientists, don't just sit in the corner
and play with their spreadsheets, and don't talk
to anybody.
They have an open office space, and they are
collaborating with staff.
When they have a team to launch a campaign, they have
to creatives, they have the mobile team, they have the
social media team, and they had to data person so that
they're always learning, and that they're always measuring
their results.
And two of the mantras that I picked up while I was there
were this-- and I thought they were fantastic.
The first one is, tear down those silos around data.
OK, it's not--
I'm the fundraising department, and you
can't have my data.
It's everybody working together.
And the other one that I thought was quite profound,
and has really changed my whole measurement practice,
was, spend more time thinking about what the data means than
collecting the data.
So let me give you an example of one of
their recent campaigns.
And here's where the animal story comes in.
They launched a campaign based on some research where they
found out that a lot of pets were languishing in shelters
and being killed, because why?
Why do you think?
Because there weren't enough great pictures of the pets
being shared online and on social channels.
So they built this app where they could recruit young
people to go into shelters, and take pictures of the pets,
and then share them online with their friends, and
encourage them to adopt the animals, to do fundraisers for
the shelter, or just raise awareness around these pets.
So they'd launched the program on the Today Show, OK?
And so, whenever I tell this story, I
usually hear a [GASP].
But they got on the Today Show, and there's this cute
little, cuddly, squirmy little puppy.
And Kathy Lee drops him on his head.
No, the puppy was OK.
But what happened is that, of course, it got captured, it
got put on YouTube, a video of it happening in fast motion,
slow motion, forwards, backwards, sport annotation on
it, and bloggers picked it up.
But what's important here is that first sentence that says,
today, DoSomething.org launched a program.
That link over to the landing page, all of a sudden-- and I
was in the office when this happened--
a lot of people started clicking.
It happened on national TV.
The data scientists went out into a room, and they were
actually looking in real time about the conversion rate.
How many people were downloading the app?
How come they-- and they were brainstorming how they can
improve the landing page.
So that's data-informed at its essence.
And of course, they have now the results.
It wasn't just a matter of people getting to that landing
page and downloading the app.
They had ways to measure each rung on that ladder of
engagement, from finding out about it on the Today Show up
to young people helping and facilitating or adopting pets,
and less pets being killed.
All right, so this next story is about a
more traditional nonprofit.
The Humane Society of the US.
How many of you know their work?
OK, so that's Carrie Lewis, and her dog Bella, who's also
featured in the book.
And Carrie and the Humane Society are early adopters of
social media.
They were kind of the front-runners in the field
five or six years ago when people were still saying,
what's a blog, and then when adults
weren't allowed on Facebook.
OK, so Carrie's been an early adapter.
And I had her take the crawl, walk, run, fly assessment.
And I said, yeah, Carrie, I bet you're running,
or flying at least.
And she said, you know what, I think we're trying to scale
being data-informed.
I think we're in the walking to jogging stage.
And part of it had to do with the silos in their
organizations, and the ability to share data, and to share
insights about what was happening in their campaigns.
So they decided to start a pilot where they would bring
people from different teams, and they would
actually do a debrief--
bringing their data, looking at what worked in the
campaign, what didn't work, and what they're going to try
for the next campaign, and generate something called the
What Worked, and What Didn't Work report.
And now this is starting to spread within their
organization.
So more teams are doing this.
And one of the stories that she also told me-- it was
great-- how of you know what a swear jar is?
OK, like if you have kids and you swear, you're supposed to
put some money in the swear jar and not swear.
OK, so they created this thing called the source code jar.
And let me tell you the genesis of that.
Back in 2011, they wanted to measure the conversion rate
from social media to fundraising.
Like, how many people heard about us on Facebook, and then
came over and made a donation?
What's our conversion rate?
Well, they couldn't track it.
Did you know why?
Because the web department didn't want to use Google
Analytics source codes.
It was too much trouble.
So Carrie convinced them to try a few pilots--
try it, let's see.
And then her team was able to report back what they were
able to learn from it.
And the web team got so excited that they started the
source code jar.
And that any campaign that didn't have a Google Analytics
source code would have to pay a fine.
And Carrie's happy to report that they never got enough
money to go out for ice cream or beer.
All right, last story.
And this one is about Upwell.
up is an ocean conservation organization that works with a
network of ocean conservation organizations, OK?
And they have adapted the lean analytics, lean startup mode
for the way that they measure and learn from their social
media campaigns.
So what they do, they do a lot of
something called big listening.
They use a program called Radian6, and they look at the
social chatter that's out there, and they look for
opportunities around ocean conservation conversations.
So once they find them, they package content with their
partners, and then they launch their campaign as a
conversation with the metric of increasing the share of
conversation about the particular cause--
whether it's ocean acidification--
I said it--
or shark conservation.
They measure their impact, they learn, and they spread
those lessons out to the network, rinse, and repeat.
So let me show you one example.
OK, so are there any data people in the room?
OK, data people just love this.
OK, so what you're looking at-- all the different colors
represent keywords that relate to their causes--
ocean, acidification, sustainable seafood, sharks,
whales, tuna, over-fishing.
And they use a keyword methodology so they can fetter
out someone who mentions "Ocean City, Maryland," versus
"save the ocean.
And they look at the amount of chatter that's happening
around those key words.
And as you can see, the pink ones is the word "shark." And
like, oh my god, more shark.
Why was there a spike in chatter around sharks?
Can you guess?
AUDIENCE: During Shark Week.
BETH KANTER: Oh, you know.
OK, Shark Week.
Who watches shark week?
OK, all right.
Watch it once, and you'll get your
explanation on what it is.
But so, a lot of people are tweeting with
this hashtag, sharkweek.
OK, so they went in for deep dive--
no pun intended.
And OK, so what's the sentiment of these people who
are tweeting around shark week?
What is the nature of what they're saying related to
shark conservation?
So we have "jaws." Oh my god, sharks, get
me out of the water.
We have "save the sharks," which is their people.
Those are the people who already know and care about
shark conservation.
And then we have, "yay sharks"--
shark lovers.
And that's what represented their opportunity here.
Can we get the yay-shark people tweeting and passing
information, and talking about shark conservation?
So they worked with their partners.
They did something called a sharkinar, which is a webinar
where they brought them together.
They talked about what content they could share, what tweets,
what links they could share, and they let them loose.
They had measured a benchmark of what the conversation was
before, and they looked at what it was after.
And did they increase the shark conservation
conversation?
Yes, they did, with the knitting.
So those are just three stories of nonprofits that our
data-informed, and probably flyers, or getting to flying.
So let me talk a little bit about some practice.
Like rolling up your sleeves, some practical things, some
principles, practices of measurement.
And I'm going to go into the--
and no, I'm not going to talk about multi-variant analysis.
I'm not going to talk in detail about actually how to
set up a source code.
I'm really going to talk about good measurement practice in
an organization, in a nonprofit.
OK, so I go back and show you--
one of the things I wanted to do in the book was one of the
initial things that I discovered when I
was doing my research.
And I was lucky enough while I was at Packard that I had 60
Packard grantees testing the frameworks that were in the
book while we were writing the book to
generate the case studies.
I'm not sure I'll do that again.
But we were in real time saying, is this something that
you would do in your organization?
Is it easy to do?
Is it hard to do?
Is it working for you, or not?
And so, we adjusted the framework slightly, and then
it also produced all of the case studies
that are in the book.
But all of that aside, when I first got into it, there were
a lot of people who were afraid of measurement.
Maybe they flunked math or whatever, but they had this
fear of measurement.
So I had measurement cartoons grace each chapter.
And this one says, "I know it's hard to measure
engagement, but there has to be a better way," to make
people laugh and feel at ease, because my ultimate goal was
to turn help nonprofits love and embrace measurement, which
would in turn improve their outcomes.
So the first thing is having a measurement discipline, OK?
I come across a lot of nonprofits where there are
collecting data, but there's no framework behind the data
to help them think about it.
So the book has a whole chapter on Katie Paine, who
was my co-author's Seven Steps of Measurement.
Pretty straightforward.
Starting with the goal, looking at your audience,
cost, benchmark, KPI, picking your tool, getting some
insight, rinse and repeat.
So one of the things that sometimes is most
demystifying--
it's not so hard to define what success is, or what
outcomes nonprofits want to reach, because it relates back
to their mission.
But the complicated part is whittling it down, and
figuring, what is the most important data point that's
going to tell us that we're successful?
And I use a phrase in the book called-- it's not a KPI, which
is a key performance indicator.
It's a KBI, which is a kicking butt indicator.
OK, so what you need to do is to gather a group--
your team, people in the organization--
who are working on the project, and talk about, what
does success look like?
And then, what's going to tell us that, hey, we're kicking
butt on this, or we're getting our butts kicked?
And picking that one metric that matters to know that
you're successful.
Takes some discipline.
And that whiteboard is actually from
the ACLU of New Jersey.
But they said, we're just reading your book, we're
reading this chapter about the kicking butt index, and we're
in the room.
We're here, and look what we did.
This is what we discussed.
And it works.
The other thing that I hear when I go out and
I talk about this--
and I think this is where you, VISTA folks, can really be an
asset to nonprofits--
is I always here, we don't know how to use Excel, we
don't have the skills.
Why aren't you measuring?
Because we don't have the skills in-house.
We don't know how to do it.
So organizations need to improve their data literacy.
Whether it means going out to the many sources of
volunteers, maybe using that LinkedIn board source tool and
finding a data scientist to come into the organization to
help them, coming to Google and begging, stealing a
Googler to work with them.
Or you, who are working with VISTA, helping the
organizations that you're working with to help
organizations get comfortable in some of the basics, and
maybe handle some of the more advanced techniques for them.
So really, really focus on data literacy.
OK, then it's the picking out the tools.
If I had a dollar for every time I got asked questions
about measurement tools, I'd be really rich.
I could retire, because it seems like that's what people
are mostly interested in.
They ask questions about the tools, because it's easy for
us to talk about the tools.
It's a little bit hard for us to have measurement
discipline.
But when we talk about the tools, it's important to
remember that there's three categories of tools, and
they're going to collect different types of data.
And you're going to use different tools to collect
different types of data depending on
what your goals are.
So we have content analysis, like the up story.
And that's looking at measuring well how messaging
is doing, or sentiment.
If your goal is around behavior change or preferences
or looking at attitudes, you're going to be doing some
survey research.
If your goal's around expanding traffic, engagement,
or taking some kind of action, or making a donation, signing
up to volunteer, then you're going to be looking at one of
the analytics tools.
And I have to say, the nonprofit sector
loves Google Analytics.
They all would like t-shirts that say, Google Analytics.
In fact, I personally have one, although it didn't match
my outfit, or else I would have worn it.
So the idea here is, don't think about the tools first.
Think about what tools are going to get you the data to
help you figure out whether you have reached your goals or
been successful.
And then, how do you know who this guy is?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
BETH KANTER: No.
Who is he?
Who?
OK.
And you know his famous line?
You know the famous line in "Crocodile Dundee"?
AUDIENCE: That's not a knife.
BETH KANTER: The knife, OK.
So he's in New York.
OK, he's in New York City, he's getting off the subway.
It's Crocodile Dundee.
and some punks come up, and they want to hold him up, and
he says, you call that a knife?
He said, that's a knife.
OK, so what I say in analysis skills, that's a spreadsheet.
OK, so this spreadsheet comes from Global Giving.
And so often, I see spreadsheets from nonprofits,
and it's just data without a framework.
And so they are gathering with their knife, cutting data from
different sources, and looking at it in context against their
goals and their strategies.
So now that's a spreadsheet.
And actually, this is a collection of spreadsheets
that I've been collecting from nonprofits on a Tumblr blogs
called F Yes, Nonprofit Spreadsheets.
OK, so if you really want to look at other examples of
nonprofit measurement spreadsheets, check it out on
Tumblr, and you'll find this one.
All right, and finally, this whole idea of reflection and
improvement.
We're so busy in nonprofits--
check it off the to-do list, let's get it done-- that we
don't hit the pause button and reflect about, OK, what is the
data actually mean?
And how are we going to change what we're doing
to get better results?
And I love MomsRising, because they have two organizational
processes that I just love.
And I love to see here when organizations steal them.
The first is they do Metrics Monday, OK?
So every Monday at their staff meeting-- and they maybe have
a dozen staff members, if that-- they sit down, and they
have a section where they look at their metrics against their
key performance indicators, and discuss it.
And they may do deeper dives, but every Monday, they're
looking at their metrics.
And during these meetings, today have institutionalized
the concept called the joyful funeral.
OK, because they know that they're experimenting with
these new tools.
Things don't always work.
How many campaigns that you ran were completely perfect
the first time you did it?
Of course, everybody, right?
But things don't go as well as they should, and you tweak,
and you measure, and you improve.
So here, if they find something that's not working,
they said, we're going to call a joyful funeral.
And what that is is they actually have a formal funeral
for a particular technique or tactic or something that just
didn't work.
OK, you know that Twitter chat that was my idea?
And we got three people to show up, and two tweets.
That bombed.
Should we give it a joyful funeral?
Yes, I'll call the flowers.
OK, it's time for a eulogy.
They actually give it a eulogy.
And when they're talking about the eulogy, they'll look at
their data, and then they'll reflect about, is this time
for us to stop doing this completely?
Or is there another test or another experiment
that we can set up?
Because they know that to get a big win, they have to fail
or have some things not work, or even to
have incremental wins.
So I think it's a great technique.
So the practices are finding the right metric--
that kicking butt metric--
data literacy in your organization from within or
from without outside, finding the right tool to get the
right data to know that you're successful, making the time
for analysis--
getting a now, that's a spreadsheet--
and also making time for reflection and continuous
improvement.
So I want to end with a story now about the final lesson
about social media measurement that I learned from my dad,
and that I can share with all of you, because I
think it's a real gift.
My dad was 91 when he passed, and he was an OB/GYN doctor
for many years.
And when we were writing his obituary, we figured that he
probably deliver 10,000 babies.
And he chose that profession because he wanted a medical
specialty that had joy and happiness in it.
And what's more happy they bringing a new
life into the world?
But he had other interests besides work.
He was an early adopter of technology.
He was the first person to get an Apple computer back
whenever he had.
He was an early adopter of the internet.
He showed me how to sign up for email.
He was an early adopter of beeper technology, cameras.
He just loved technology.
But what he loved even more than technology was the ocean.
He really cared deeply about the ocean and ocean
conservation, but mostly, also, surfing.
So are there any surfers in the audience?
Any surfers?
Well, if there were, they'd recognize that the board he's
carrying is a Greg Noll board, which is a classic.
It's a big board.
And that's actually me and my brother in the ocean.
So I wanted to find a way to honor him, and
so I came up with--
I was going to do a social media fundraising campaign to
raise money for Surfrider Foundation for ocean
conservation, and also to do an online memorial event.
Now when a surfer dies, in real life,
they do a paddle out.
And a paddle out is where they all have
paddle out in the ocean.
They get in a big circle out in the ocean.
They hold hands, and they throw flowers up in the air to
remember the surfer who passed.
So I thought, given his love of technology, I wanted to do
something virtually.
So I came up with an online memorial where I get people to
tweak the hashtag oceanloveearl during the
24-hour period, and share stories of
their love of the ocean.
And the goal is to get as many people to honor my father in
this way, and also raise some money.
So one of the things I want to get nonprofits past is don't
just count, OK?
Get beyond counting, OK?
Yes, you have to count when you measure.
That's the first level.
So if I'm counting, I could tell you all of this, all
these stats about the campaign, and
pat myself on back.
Wow, I raised $5,500.
I got 128 donors with 87% donating more than the
suggested minimum gift level.
I converted 85% from Facebook.
72% were strong ties, and only 2% actually even knew my dad.
And I'm like, wow, wow, aren't those great numbers.
And that was about the fundraiser.
And I could tell you the same sorts of
things about the event.
That, wow, I had social reach of over a million.
I got over 3,000 people tweeting with the
hashtag, and so forth.
But get beyond the numbers, OK?
Use all those practices and measurement.
And I did.
And I want to tell you a little bit about what I
learned about social
fundraising, and online events.
So the first thing is that you have to set a goal, and you
have to do it based on benchmarking, OK?
Now I have done personal fundraising campaigns in the
past for happier occasions, like my birthday, and I've
been able to raise $5,000.
So I thought, $5,000's a good goal.
But sometimes, we're afraid of not making our goals, so we
put them way too low.
Or on the other hand, we are totally unrealistic, and we're
out of context, and we put them way too high, and then we
beat ourselves up because we failed, and we give up.
So benchmark.
Look at what others, or look at your past.
And I did 10% more than the goal.
The next thing is, don't suffer from the too
small to fail, OK?
And I have done this in my fundraising campaigns.
I would set my minimum gift level as like $5 or $10,
thinking, OK, my friends aren't that rich.
I'll give them an easy in.
And people donate at the suggested gift minimum.
And if it's too much, they'll donate less.
And I found that out, because I did $25 as the
minimum gift level.
And I got a little clever.
I named each giving level after a wave.
And I think the $100 was a cowabunga.
$25 was a pipeline wave, and $250 were hurricane swirls.
And I had, what was it?
I had 128 donors, with 87% donating at least the gift of
minimum or above.
So don't set your minimums too low, and people will give
according to what you asked for.
The next is--
see, my dad was the first early selfie taker.
He experimented with cameras.
So I have a whole collection of selfies of me growing up.
See, it's not just a new thing in the last couple of years.
But what would happen is every time I got a donation, I
thanked people publicly, and I was using my Facebook profile.
And every time I thanked people for a donation--
and I did it very personally with a personal picture, and a
link back to the campaign--
I got more donations, because I compared the time that I
posted my thank you with the time that I got the donation.
And I found that 85% converted from Facebook.
But really, the lesson here is about social proofing, and
social proofing is modeling the behavior that you want
other people to do.
In this case, it's, oh wow, Beth's thanking all these
people who are donating to this campaign, and I'm a
friend of Beth, and I've seen what's been going on.
So yeah, I'm going to donate, too.
So it's this whole concept of social proofing.
So the other thing that I had in the campaign is that I had
a continuum of ways for people to engage.
From the high ask, which was write a check or put in your
credit card, give some advice to the campaign, share our
personal story about your love of the ocean; to things that
were at a lower level, about just sharing the hashtag or
retweeting.
And it's really important to have that continuum of
engagement, because people are going to come in and out at
different levels.
And there's a great article about that at the Stanford
Innovation Review about the donor
journey, the donor vortex.
And I applied that idea to this campaign, and it works.
At the same time, you're also supposed to have--
think about influencers in your campaign.
Now, you know what an influencer is?
Someone who can influence other
people to make a donation.
So while I had different levels of engagement, I also
targeted people who were influential within their
network so they could inspire their networks.
And so, I had 11 different blog posts or Facebook posts
from influencers that represented different segments
of my personal network.
So at the nonprofit tech people, I had the
social media people.
Because I was raising money for Surfrider rider I had the
surfers behind me.
And I was also running an analysis--
a social network map--
of all these different networks.
Now the big blue one, that one's my network.
But there were also these other networks where there
were other influencers that could reach into getting more
gifts that came in.
So this was a way to getting influencers, to leverage your
network, and to think about it in a networked way.
Finally, I know a lot of us have been experimenting with
promoted posts on Facebook.
I hear it a lot from nonprofits.
And what I decided to do, I knew that if I spent money
with the goal of trying to convert those in the amount of
time I had, and given the campaign, it probably wouldn't
work as well.
But I had another goal of getting people to tweet with
the hashtag.
And at the same time, I also knew that Mashable was writing
up the whole thing, was talking
about the hashtag event.
So I timed the promotion to kind of accelerate what was
already out there.
And you can see kind of the big balloon of where when you
use a promotion like this, it's sort of like adding
gasoline to the fire.
So you can't expect promoted posts to create the fire.
But if you have where you're riding a wave, and you have a
lot of buzz around it, you can give it that extra push.
Because again, my goal was to get as much awareness around
using the hashtag in the event, and to get people
tweeting during that day.
And finally, this didn't come from the numbers at all.
This came from looking and counting up, what were the
number of people that shared their personal story about the
love of the ocean, and what were some of the creative
things that they did?
And I had something around 37 instances of people sharing
the hashtag with their story around
their love of the ocean.
And what's great about this is that if you've built your
network in the right way, it unleashes the creativity.
But I'm also thinking ahead, and I'm thinking about,
wouldn't this be a great thing for me to do every year, to
raise money for ocean conservation,
and to honor my dad?
And oh my god, I'm going to need content.
And here, the network has produced this great content,
so I'm not starting all over from scratch.
And because I've captured it and measured it, I have it at
hand when I start planning my campaign.
So all this to say--
I guess my point with all of these things is measurement is
great, but go beyond the numbers, go beyond counting.
Use all those measurement practices to really learn.
So in summary, these were, I guess, my take-aways, and
hopefully yours, are having a networked practice, having
measurement discipline happens incrementally
one step at a time.
Don't try to have too much change in your organization.
Also, linking social media to outcomes
requires some silo busting.
And again, that happens in small steps.
Data literacy--
this is a real need in the nonprofit sector.
And it's great that you're in the room, and I have the great
people in the room, because I know lots of nonprofits who
would love to snap you up.
I was talking to a couple of math majors at lunch, and I
was secretly writing down your names and your emails.
And again, go beyond counting your data, and really embrace
the learning from it.
So with that, I want to thank you for letting me share--
[APPLAUSE]
and open it up for questions.
AUDIENCE: That hashtag, was it oceanloveearl?
BETH KANTER: Yes.
oceanloveearl.
I broke a rule of hashtags.
It was a little bit too long, but I wanted ocean, love, and
earl in there, so.
AUDIENCE: Are all the tools that you're using for
tracking, are they online open source, or are you using
software, hardware?
BETH KANTER: OK, so in the oceanloveearl example, I'd
like to eat my own dog food, and I work with a lot of small
and midsized nonprofits who don't-- as you know, as you
all know-- don't have a lot of resources and time.
So I've tried to just use what is available out there that's
low cost and free.
So yeah, I use Google Analytics, Facebook Insights.
I used a spreadsheet.
Because of that, I pulled Razoo was
the fundraising platform.
And I use RowFeeder which will gather up tweets based on a
hashtag, and throw them in a Google
Spreadsheet for analysis.
So I use light, free tools, and my brain, and my heart.
AUDIENCE: So for our group-- for the hands-on tech group
that is working with all these different nonprofits, a lot of
the nonprofits that we work with, there's always that
question, which I'm sure you've heard a million times
is, how long should I spend on my social media?
And I know that's a tricky question, but any advice?
BETH KANTER: Well, first what's behind the question?
Because does it come out when you're having a conversation
about what you could do?
Or is it coming out from the typical scenario that I see a
lot, and you probably see the same, is that it's a small
organization, and it's probably one person who does
all the marketing communications, and it's sort
of part of their job at making time to do that.
So what we try to look at is, what are your goals?
What is your strategy?
What are you trying to do?
And does it fit with your current capacity, OK?
And can you downsize or right-size your strategy to
fit your current capacity, use your measurement and best
practices, and get results?
Now if you want to start to scale your results, we're
going to have to look at how can we invest more time or
resources in this?
And so, usually that becomes a conversation about, how can we
train and get other people in the organization
to use these resources?
Or moving up to having a halftime position,
quarter-time position, or full-time position.
And I can also say that there's lots of ways and
techniques out there to be efficient.
Like, I've gotten really good with tweeting with one hand,
and drying my hair with the other.
And there are ways that you can plan your day so you are
more efficient.
Some people--
I hear a lot, oh, do I have to be on Twitter all the time?
I said, well, no, you can use it during found time while
you're waiting in line to get your lunch.
Send off tweets.
There's scheduling tools.
There's lots of ways to be efficient, so
I'd also look at.
AUDIENCE: So the talk about the targeting these
nonprofits, you also talk about some [INAUDIBLE].
So what's different between this maybe-- or key difference
between the nonprofit versus like a Google?
BETH KANTER: A for-profit?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
for-profit [INAUDIBLE].
And also, how is people from profit organizations be
successful and make a contribution.
How do they adapt to the [INAUDIBLE]?
BETH KANTER: OK, so I think I heard two questions.
OK, so one was sort of the difference between the
nonprofit and the for-profit sector.
And they're becoming more blurred.
And you might want to look up the work of Lucy Burnholz, who
is taking a specific look at different formats and the
different legal formats, and the ways that they work
between nonprofit and for-profit.
And from a measurement perspective and a social media
perspective, I think a lot of nonprofits are more similar to
small businesses, because they typically have less resources
than a large corporation like Google that may have a
department.
I think larger nonprofits may be similar to Google, and
there may be different departments,
there may be more silos.
And that may be as similarity.
I think the main difference is that nonprofits are measuring
things that, aside from some of the financial outcomes like
donations or people signing up to volunteer, they're trying
to measure things that are kind of difficult, like social
change, climate change, saving the world.
And that requires a whole other set of skills than maybe
measuring sales cycles and product growth.
So your second question, which I think was about how could--
I'm assuming you work for Google?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
BETH KANTER: OK.
That how can I, as, an employee of a large
corporation like Google, make a difference in
the nonprofit sector?
And I think most corporations--
and correct me if I'm wrong-- probably you have a volunteer
program where you place, and have volunteer opportunities.
I would find that person in department internally.
It's right there, right?
Talk to Seth.
And if you have measurement skills or data skills, my god,
could I have your card?
I know 15 nonprofits within the last week have said, we
need a data person.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, that's what I've been working on.
I'm an analyst for the emerging markets, so that
Cambodia [INAUDIBLE].
We cover a lot [INAUDIBLE].
BETH KANTER: OK, well, definitely talk to Seth.
AUDIENCE: As a follow-up to that, maybe you can talk a
little bit about organizations that are effectively using
volunteers to either help with their social media, or help
measure their social media campaigns.
BETH KANTER: Sure.
The one that comes to mind--
their name is the Analysis Exchange.
And they pair people who do analytics in corporations with
nonprofits, and actually a student who is taking an
analytics course.
And they will sit and do a project, and help them get set
up, and teach them how to use their analytics program.
And while I was writing the book actually, some of my
testers actually worked with several of them, and they said
it was great.
Since then, I've seen-- and I wrote a blog post about this
called "Help, My Nonprofit Needs a Data Nerd." I've seen
more and more organizations that are doing volunteer
skill-matching.
And one of them is called DataKind, where they actually
place data scientists with nonprofits.
I think also, I know you had the good folks from LinkedIn
yesterday talk to you, and they probably talked about the
profile categories.
Going to LinkedIn, if you're on LinkedIn, and I tell
nonprofits to actually go to LinkedIn and sign up for Board
Source, and start searching on those different skills that
you need to recruit in-house.
AUDIENCE: And just internally for Google, the Googlers who
are here, you can go to go/give to find more volunteer
opportunities, including social media and analytics
[INAUDIBLE].
AUDIENCE: Hi, Beth.
My name is Ling-ling.
I'm a [INAUDIBLE] serving in Pittsburgh this year.
My question for you is that not only is in nonprofit
sector, it seems like the priority is really applying
for grants, so that the nonprofit will have a budget
to do the job.
So we're talking the skill budget instead of the skill
[INAUDIBLE]
or their mission.
And so, have you ever tried to use social media to facilitate
the grant application process?
Or do you foresee that there will be a trend for
grant-makers to use that piece as an environment for
grant-making?
Because really, I believe that we should talk more about the
scale of their dream instead of the scale of their budget.
BETH KANTER: Yeah.
So you're talking about one of my favorite topics is on the
one side, we have the nonprofit sector using social
media to do maybe grant research, OK?
So if I was a nonprofit, and I wanted to do that, I would
definitely be looking and listening and looking at the
profiles of the foundations that are using social media,
and learning and connecting with different staff members
that are out there.
And I would go to a place like the Glass Pocket's blog, which
is supposed to be about to philanthropy and transparency.
And there is a list there if you go
into one of the sections.
You'll find this list, and you'll see all the
foundations, and you can actually sort them by, I want
to see all their Facebook pages, all their blogs, all
their Twitter profiles.
And then as you start to dig down into the Twitter
profiles, you may start to find other staff members that
you can actually start to be build that relationship.
Now in terms of a nonprofit using social media to generate
funding, there is a story of--
it was an organization in New Jersey that did young people's
entrepreneur programs.
And it has a name, it's going to come to me.
It's a national organization, and they have affiliates.
And so, the development director had started using
Twitter, and she was saying things like, sign up for our
golf charity event, and she was getting crickets.
And then she said, OK, I'm going to start figuring out
who's following me.
I'm going to start figuring out who's interested in after
school programs, and who's talking about that on Twitter.
And she found this person who is the founder of a local
family foundation.
And she found them on Twitter.
It was one of her followers.
And she started talking to her on Twitter.
And then she got invited to lunch, and then the funder
actually made a grant of $35,000 to fund her program.
I don't think that, right now, is the norm.
But it shows that there is a possibility of this.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
question, because your last advice really struck me, said
go beyond the [INAUDIBLE].
Really, if you don't have the speech scheduled you, I really
want to suggest to you to give a talk to the grant-makers,
because in the nonprofit sector,
everything is so connected.
If the indication can come from the money-giver side, it
would be so much easier for nonprofits to budget our money
to invest into the social media strategy.
Then we'll get the return on that investment.
BETH KANTER: And I think funders are coming a long way.
A couple years ago, I was sort of taking that mantle up.
But if you take a look at, like for example, the Case
Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
If you want to see an example of the future, of a
philanthropy organization embracing social media and
connecting, just take a look at what Robert
Wood Johnson is doing.
And also, they did a great convening in the field of the
state of social media measurement.
They brought together and started raising the dialogue
around that.
AUDIENCE: All right.
With that, we'll say thank you to Beth Kanter.
Really appreciate it.
BETH KANTER: Right.
Thank you, thank you.
[APPLAUSE]