Update on fundraising

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Just a few quick notes about fundraising on Facebook.

The application with the most acceptance is “causes”. But the one that seems most interesting to me is “change”. The first, despite its name, starts with the selection of a nonprofit. The second starts with the end “Empower Youth,” “Achieve Pay Equity” and then allows the network of nonprofits that work on that change to “connect” to those who support the goal.

There are still bugs/holes in the system. The Facebook change application ties back to a completely separate “social networking for good” site at change.org, and there’s an extra step to connect a Facebook profile to a Change.org profile. The folks at Change.org haven’t yet figured out how to connect their “actions” (come to an event, do something on this day) to Facebook so that they show up there. For now the “discussion board” options may be the best way to get the word out about recommended actions. On the other hand, one action that I created as a “once in a lifetime” commitment with no specific time did come through to Facebook. Note that you cannot create the actions in Facebook – you must login to your profile on change.org to do that.

One other piece that’s not so obvious is that the Change application in Facebook allows you to “vote” for a nonprofit tied to a particular change. So, for AAUW members, it’s suggested that you look for the EF, LAF and LTI as the “nonprofits” assigned to a change and add your vote when you “join” the change.

Facebook and the “grand convergence”?

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Quoted (?) on the Information Systems Forum (so “I” is either Deborah Elizabeth Finn or Caroline Meeks):

There’s some thought going around that Facebook is going to end up as the de facto front end for a lot of online social networking, and I think that nonprofits should seriously consider a united strategy for creating Facebook widgets.

More info: www.webmasterworld.com/

Care and feeding of volunteers

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My branch president forwarded the following:

We were really intrigued by a chart we saw that showed the vast differences in volunteer retention among the 50 states, ranging from a high of 76.4 percent in Minnesota to a low of 47.2 percent in Mississippi. It seemed to us like there must be some pretty solid managerial tools that can be used to get those numbers closer to the Minnesota range, so we called on Robert Grimm, director of research and policy development for the Corporation for National and Community Service a couple of weeks ago. He pointed to the fact that one out of three people who volunteer in a year don’t volunteer at all the next year. “We have a leaky bucket in volunteering,” he said. “About 21 million people who volunteered in 2005 didn’t volunteer in 2006.”

What’s to be done? Grimm had a few ideas:

  • Volunteers have to be challenged to use their skills effectively; it’s just silly to use a trained social worker to stuff envelopes.
  • Regular opportunities to volunteer – rather than sporadic ones – tend to keep people interested and engaged.
  • Organizations that screen and match their volunteers, provide recognition for their volunteers and have some kind of individual on staff to manage the volunteers do best at retaining these helpful people.
  • Volunteers will thrive if they report to someone who demonstrates that they’re important to the organization. Many organizations give volunteers to a lower-level employee, which leads them to believe they’re not seen as an important resource.
  • It can be very helpful to offer some training or professional development for the volunteers.

Food for thought … Original source: www.governing.com/manage/eletter/bgreport.htm