Future:Media:Change

2009 showed the world the power of the online platform, not only as a mobilizing tool but also as a powerful way to raise donations.  Candidate Obama raised over half a billion dollars during his Presidential bid (Washington Post).  Online donations for non profits also continued to increase.  According to the Chronicle for Philanthropy, a little over half of donors preferred to use the Internet to make contributions.  With online donations being steadily incorporated into the normative giving structure, what else can we ask our community to do?  Is there something beyond money that will actually mobilize people?

There is a growing movement of non profits who want to move beyond only donations, who see giving money as the entry point of engagement but are looking to their community to help actually move their movement as well.  As giving money online becomes easier and more common, the future of community engagement lies more in what innovate ways we can encourage and mobilize our community rather than creative methods of soliciting more money per donor.   The following are a series of stages (for lack of a better word) of user engagement that non profits can look to in order to get beyond the donation hump.

1.  Merging Online & Offline

One of the ways non profits have been engaging users is not adding more layers of online technology but urging their base to meet in person.  You all know the power of face-to-face human interaction  so I won’t spend too much time on this topic.

2. Mico-time donation

For years people have had to go through hoops to volunteer for a non profit.  In many cases the process has resembled to a job interview rather than an easy way of giving back.  Many in the community now are beginning to realize the power of micro-time donations, or donating small increments of time to help a non profit.  With the proliferation of smart phone on the market now, the process has become even easier.  A service called the Extraordinaries for the iPhone gives non profits the ability to post their mico-actions on an application that anyone can tap into.

users can add tags to photos from the Smithsonian to bring more collective context to that museum’s huge archives; help create a huge map of kid-friendly places by finding a “playspace” and snapping a photo of it; -CNET

The key with micro-time donations is the ability to boil down a meaningful action into something that can be done in 5 minute settings.  Easy for some non profits, impossible for others.

3. Using Skills

Your community is filled with people from all walks of life; lawyers, teachers, doctors etc.  Being able to tap into your community’s unique skill sets rather than just asking for time could be a large step in the volunteering model.  Think of a normal volunteering model.  A call is made for volunteers to say build a house for the homeless.  People from all skill sets help construct a house, regardless of what they are actually good at doing.  There is one train of thought that postulates that people would much rather put their skills they learn in the workplace to good use helping other people.  So why not use your community’s skills to help your objective?

Of course implementing a working system like this is much harder.  We saw in the Obama Campaign a first attempt at filtered volunteering.  In a normative volunteering form you were allowed to check off any specific skills you had, which were then collated to the central office.  There are ways to go further with this though.  One is to have specific calls for individual skill sets within your community.  Let’s say you have a project that needs graphic design, why not ask if there is anyone in your community that has skills they are willing to donate?  Another way is to include skill set meta data within specific emails so that non profits have a database of people who are willing to donate their time and carry out specific skilled actions.  All of this of course requires coordination, but if done correctly, you could get an incredible amount of free labor as well as really energize your community.

4. Using Skills in a Team

Going even another step further we can look at integrated skill sets into a team framework.  This would entail sourcing specific skill sets from across your network, forming a team and then allowing the team to carry out certain objectives that are meaningful to your non profit.  This goes beyond the normal team project of just setting fund raising goals in a group, but uses the unique skill sets of individuals to get a job done.  This kind of action requires even more coordination but it has the potential of doing some really cool things.  Let’s say for example you want a new take on social networking strategies.  You already surveyed your network and know what kind of skills exist.  You put together 10 teams of 3 people each; one graphic designer, one programmer and one person in marketing.  Each team puts together a 1 page document with their thoughts on what your non profit should be doing online.  The reports are posted online and you give your entire community the chance to vote on their favorite concept.

As we enter 2010, I think we should all examine how technology can improve community engagement.  If your community wants to give more than money, you should have the mechanisms in place to make it happen.  If you’re able to better involve your network in the process, they will undoubtedly donate more as well.