The piece I had on display was from iCohere and had these tips:

• Create a concise purpose statement
• Define members’ roles
• Establish expectations and timelines for participation
• Set expectations around renewed content
• Ensure privacy
• “Seed” the site
• Facilitate through role modeling
• Launch the community after an in-person meeting
• Conduct special online events
• Directly enlist members’ participation
• “Push” content to less active members
• Recognize exemplary members

So how many of those strategies do I follow? Well, now that I’ve typed them out myself, perhaps things like AAUW NC on Facebook and the BBVX Wiki (bbvx – one step beyond, get it?) will get incremental improvements.

For more of this wisdom, see, for example, www.icohere.com/CollaborativeLearning.htm and other articles on that site.

It includes an overview PowerPoint — great for sharing with branch boards. One item, though:

“AAUW will not host discussions of candidate qualifications; that must be done in separate member-generated venues.”

So, members, what are your thoughts on this? Is something like election2009.bbvx.org needed again? Is someone thinking about hosting “virtual candidate forums”? Would another strategy be better for candidates?

Do we need something like the voter education so many branches do for public elections — or is this election just not worth the effort?

Applying for a card has been a simple process. Check with your bank to find out what their processes are, but for us, it was simply a matter of having one of the people who was already on the account’s signature card apply. She needs to give her own social security number (though the account doesn’t show up in any credit reports I’ve checked for my SSN). Both her name and the branch’s appears on the card.

You may or may not need a “PIN” for the card. Since our financial policies prohibit writing checks to cash, we decided we didn’t need the pin: we don’t make any ATM transactions, and if we’re using it for local purchases we always have it run as a “credit” card. But check to see if the PIN might be needed for online banking transactions or other things that streamline the financial processes.

What are the benefits of having the card:

1. We can use the card for online payments and avoid extra reimbursement complications when online payments are the only/best way to make a payment. For example some ongoing services such as a web site might require an online payment. As another example, consider Shop AAUW.
2. The card has been absolutely fabulous to pay members’ dues using the Membership Payment Process (MPP). A new member can be on the national rolls and connected to the branch in about a week, much faster than when using payment with a paper check. Besides, it saves the effort of using the USMail and the cost of a stamp to send in the payment.
3. We use the card to “verify” our account with PayPal. Having a PayPal (business) account in the name of the branch, and tied to the branch bank account, allows you to accept online payments (via credit card, not just from those who also have PayPal accounts). Think how this might make things simpler in accepting dues or registration fees. Yes, PayPal gets a “cut” of the transaction, but you could increase the fee charged online to cover this — or, go along with the rest of the world and just consider this a “cost of doing business” that’s built into your budget.
4. The officers who are authorized to sign checks and who expect to have an ongoing need for making purchases in the name of the branch can use the card instead. Their personal funds aren’t used for branch projects, and the branch saves the effort involved in writing them reimbursements. Those reimbursements may get complicated if your policies say someone cannot write a reimbursement check to herself.  Of course, those who spend the branch’s money should expect to document it just as carefully if they use the card as they would if they were requesting reimbursement — but the bank statement will at least show a card number that can be tied back to an individual and a vendor.

Of course, as with all things financial, good policies and good oversight go a long way towards making this work — but do consider whether this would be a good tool for your branch.

Comments?

• Members at large (now called national members) who join AAUW at the national level
• Branch members who join community-based groups
• College/University partner institutions who name one of their staff members as a “representative” to AAUW . The “rep”  is treated as a national member and may join one or more branches if s/he wishes.

In addition, there has been an “intermediate level” structure in each state. All branches are expected to participate in the state organization and contribute to the state organization based on their membership and the dues set by the state organization. How national members participate in the state and whether or not college/university reps are granted special status in the state organization (other than as national members) depends on individual state bylaws.

In the last few years, we’ve also seen the rise of virtual branches that are not tied to a specific community. These are of two forms:

• Online branch, e.g. AAUW CA Online Branch
• Branch without borders, e.g. AAUW Tar Heel Branch

The first mirrors a community-based branch with programming and communications that involve the entire branch but are conducted “online”. The second provides something more like an “at large membership in the state” with the additional benefit that members who find that there are a few other members near them can self-organize community-based events that advance the AAUW mission. Both of these types of branches may have a high proportion of their members who are active in AAUW at the state and national levels — those who see the benefit of connecting with AAUW members outside of their local community.

With the new AAUW bylaws of 2009, it is possible for new types of AAUW “entities” to be organized under the following Article:

ARTICLE XII. ADDITIONAL AAUW ENTITIES
The AAUW Board of Directors may establish informal geographic, issue, or special interest groups and networks to further the mission of AAUW and foster the specific interests and needs of members. In addition, groups of members, branches, or states may form other affiliations with one another to serve common AAUW purposes. If desired, they may seek recognition of those AAUW entities following procedures and policies established by the AAUW Board of Directors.

I’m not sure that there’s a broad understanding of what kinds of entities are possible, so here are some examples -

• Established by the Board of Directors – this strategy could be used any time an issue could be better addressed by a broader-based, grass roots effort instead of (or in addition to) a more tightly controlled committee, task force, or even a mailing list.
• Established by
  • States
    • A multi-state structure that can complement (or replace) individual state governance structures
    • A group for a state-wide project such as a Student Advisory Group or a Lobby Corps
  • Branches
    • A coalition of virtual branches to share ideas and, perhaps, programming
    • A coalition of branches that are near each other but in different states to share communication channels and more tightly integrate their programming
  • Members
    • A group supporting each other in a specific role (e.g. web managers, book sale coordinators)
    • A group working on a specific issue of interest (e.g. pay equity, STEM)

The second sentence above (“… groups of members … may …”) is really just stating the obvious. Of course, these groups “may” self-organize without the imprimatur of AAUW. The crux of the matter is  how they use “AAUW” in advertising their work — and here, clear and simple processes to both protect the “brand” AAUW and to allow for the grass roots to address issues that have not (yet?) been awarded resources by the national organization need to be laid out.

If you see any policies on this posted at aauw.org, please let the rest of us know!

AAUW NC has had

• a mailing list open to all members since 1997 or so with more specialized lists (for branch presidents, state leaders) for several years. These are set up as “discussion lists” but only a few people ever post.
• an RSS feed since about 2005  aauwnc.org/feed, which (theoretically) offers a way to subscribe to the news
• a twitter account since 2007 or so (originally set up as a to retweet web site posts marked as “announcements” and encouraging folks to “subscribe via your phone”), twitter.com/aauwnc
• and a Facebook page since ?? (maybe late 2008 or sometime in 2009). facebook.com/aauwnc

These are integrated in the following ways

Tools:

• twitterfeed.com used to read the RSS feed from the web site and repost to twitter
• ping.fm used to post items to Facebook and Twitter at the same time
• tweetree used to read/post as @nes49  – a browser based client that doesn’t have the advanced “listening” features of something like tweetdeck or hootsuite but does have “real names” and threaded discussions which really help me understand the messages.
• twirl used to manage “organization” twitter accounts, making it easy to be both @aauwnc and @ncwu
• The website posts are imported to Facebook using the notes application — doesn’t always work correctly (and seems to be particularly problematic today, sigh).

An  earlier part of the conversation mentioned using Facebook to reach college/university populations. AAUW NC uses it to reach Facebook members in general, and doesn’t gear it for C/U communication in particular. There are many nonmember fans of the page, but few of those are on campuses. They are mostly friends of fans or come from connections through our allied organizations.

None of these communication avenues have a broad reach, and I don’t spend much time on analytics. From anecdotal evidence, I have to believe that the Facebook page is doing a better job of reaching our members. On the other hand, since we’ve set up the page we’ve cut back on our “e-newsletter” publications, and I’m sure we’re missing some people who haven’t “liked” the page, don’t use Facebook at all, and never check the News page on the web site. So we’re going back to basics and looking at better use of a mailing list, which is still the way many people prefer to get their news.  As for nonmembers — twitter and Facebook both reach folks who might not have heard about us otherwise — but we’ve not been  as intentional about the outreach as we might have been.

For more on the general topic of setting up a marketing plan and using new (and old) media, I’d recommend Kivi Leroux Miller’s new book “The Nonprofit Marketing Guide”  (amazon link). It has a number of practical tips, some of which are aimed at larger organizations. But I found it useful to read in the context of a branch/state marketing plan, most of which fall into her “marketing department of one” target audience. See www.nonprofitmarketingguide.com for more. [I'm rereading it now -- let me know if you're interested in a virtual book discussion.]

See also www.aauwnc.org/subscribe.

I’ve seen three different ways branches and states start their presence on Facebook:

• Profile. Someone uses an e-mail address and registers the branch/state as an “individual” in Facebook. That entity has “friends”, posts show up on friends’ walls, and in general it behaves like anyone else on Facebook.
• Group. Someone creates a Group in the branch/state’s name and becomes the “administrator”. The Group has “members” who can see each others names. It can be configured with places for discussions, wall posts, uploading photos, etc. The Group administrator’s posts show up as coming from their “real” name.
• Page. Someone creates a Facebook Page in the branch/state’s name. The Page has “fans” who have said they “like” the Page. Fans can see a few other fans, but can’t browse through them all. The administrator’s posts show up as coming from the Page, not the individual. The Page can be configured to allow fans to post — or not.

I’d recommend against using a Profile for a branch/state Facebook presence. While this may no longer be explicitly counter to Facebook’s terms and conditions, there are just too many places where Facebook assumes that a Profile is for a “person.” It gets confusing to publicize a branch/state with a Profile. For instance, when you (as the branch Profile account) ask someone to be a friend, who, exactly, is doing the ask? Would you be apt to respond to such a request without being able to “see” the real person?

So should you use a group or a page? It depends -

• Pages are better for reaching out to new people and posting public information (say things that appear on your web site — or would appear there if you had a web site). “Liking” a Page is a low risk action for new people: they aren’t giving the Page any additional access to their Profile. However, it does mean that information posted on the page will get into the news stream that they see when they login to Facebook. They will also get messages from the Page — but these will go to the “updates” section, not the “normal” Facebook inbox.
• Groups are better for sharing information with a committed group of people who will “go” to the Group periodically to see what’s new. Group administrators can send messages to the Group members and these will go directly to the main Facebook “inbox” as coming from the Group. You may see your friends’ activities as they post to the Group, but, in general, things posted to the Group stay in the Group.  It’s possible to control access to a Group so that only those with an invitation can join — so a Group could be used as, for example, a virtual yearbook where only members of the branch are allowed access.

So just as you wouldn’t set up a web site when you really need an e-mail list or vice versa, Pages and Groups can have very different niches in your social media strategy. You may want one or the other or you might have reasons to set up both. Multiple people can be named administrators of either: check them out and see how they can improve your AAUW communications both to the public and to current members.

• AAUW Dialog is runing on wordpress.com
• A few state sites (AAUW NC, AAUW GA, AAUW OH) are running software from wordpress.org
• Branch sites (AAUW Tar Heel, AAUW Tucson) are running on both wordpress.com and self-hosted.

We’re talking about a “special interest group” of AAUW web managers who are interested in WordPress. If you’d be interested in that, please post a comment (and/or contact me if you’d like to take a leadership role.

In the meantime, you can find the links I took away from WordCamp on Delicious (with more to be added).

Having just come from the NTC and spending some time working on the “mini-NTC” NCTech4Good conference, the large number of women at this conference didn’t seem odd at first — but I had to agree when someone pointed it out that for a fairly tech conference it was good to see so many women (though the % dropped off dramatically in the developer’s track).

I had noticed that there were only two women on the speakers’ list, despite efforts nationally to encourage women to speak up at such events (e.g. womenwhotech.org threads and the local example of the remarkable Rebecca Murphey and triwebwomen.ning.com).

So I suppose it wasn’t surprising that at least one slide slipped through with some offensive content. I wasn’t at the talk. I don’t know the speaker’s style and he may have been able to use the slide in a way that made it marginally acceptable. I do know that at 11:00 last night, it distracted me from the content I was reviewing on SlideShare, and that removing the one slide from the deck could help other women concentrate on the meat of his presentation. [He has a lot to say and I have ordered his book.]

For others who want to think about such issues, I’ll have some copies of Why so Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Science at this morning’s WordCamp Raleigh session. The report, funded by the Natiional Science Foundation and published in March by AAUW, is available for free download and in hard-copy at www.aauw.org/whysofew.

I’ll be wearing a blue T-shirt and a blue/yellow plaid jacket. Twitter is @nes49, but I don’t normally check it in real time (though if I follow you, I can get your DM’s on my phone).

• The icons to access various Facebook applications have moved from the lower left to the left hand column (where they used to be). They replace the “quick links” to show the news from subsets of friends.
• The “notifications” icon has moved from the lower right to the upper left (and is now almost invisible). I’ve yet to see any notifications come in, so I don’t know if it will be move visible when it’s active.
• The only thing left that uses the bottom of the screen is the chat application (which also appears in the left hand menu). I don’t use that, so I’m not sure if there are other changes.
• The confusing News Feed/Live Feed options are still there — but can now be accessed on the upper right of the main content window as “Top News” and “Most Recent”.  By default, as before, Facebook shows the “Top News” chosen by some proprietary algorithm that no doubt uses some metric about how “close” you are to a particular friend and how many other friends have commented on the post. If you want to see everything, click “Most Recent”. [There used to be a way to make “Most Recent” the default. If I find out what that is, I’ll post here.
• Access to your list of friends has changed from the top menu to a topic in the Account menu (at the top right). That’s where you’d go to search for new friends, edit your friend lists, etc.
• The friend lists that used to appear in the left hand column are now a click or two away under the Friends link in that column.

With gajillion Facebook users feeding data to the Facebook developers, I have to believe that these changes were based on usage patterns. For instance, it’s possible that few people “found” the icons at the bottom of the page, and that few people actually used the prominent access to friend lists in the left hand column.

Obviously, change is unsettling — we all have other things to do with the energy it takes to adapt to these changes. But since all gajillion of us do use a single interface, our choices are to adapt as Facebook solves problems that no other company has ever had, or go off and start our own networks where we have more control (and have to spend considerably more energy on the information architecture, user interface, recruiting participants, and other issues). My choice is to stay here — where there’s a much greater probability of finding the folks I’d like to talk to.

For more on the reasons behind the changes, see the Facebook blog.

If you want to help update that “Facebook for AAUW” document, please contact me or one of the other folks listed in the document.