Techcrunch reports that Project Agape started by Sean Parker (co-founder of multiple Internet properties, Plaxo, Facebook and Napster) is headed towards the social and political activism space. So that makes for yet another social network treading on nonprofit ground. I know, I know, I understand that certain people in our sector are experiencing social networking fatigue. I say, give it time, I suspect that it will take 2-4 years before anything seriously materializes in the nonprofit space around a social network. In the meantime, let these new properties such as change.org bloom and grow.
I think the deeper question is this: can these new social networks eventually outweigh in importance existing off-line social networks at nonprofits?
In the past, the most successful social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn used existing communities such as students and alumni or business connections to create a base layer for activity surrounding their site. The problem here is that nonprofits actually hold all the cards when it comes to social networks designed around activism. Who generates the real content around an issue? The nonprofit. Who already has an existing offline social network (which is how Facebook and LinkedIn started)? The nonprofit. Who generates the events that swirl around an issue or topic? The nonprofit. If these new social networks think that they can operate at a stratospheric level, merely using software to build connections that are simply not there, they will fail. In other words, you can’t start up a social network unless you have a supernode. And that supernode is the nonprofit itself.
At the very least, it will retard the growth of nonprofit social networks because they’ve ignored one of the problems of networks and that a network is only as good as its smartest and most devoted members. And if they’re that smart and devoted, they’re already involved with the nonprofit in question. In some respects, nonprofit social networks experience a kind of “brain drain” that stems from the off-line activities of the nonprofit in question. This is very different from building a social network based on students and alumni where the intent is to participate in offline and online activity that didn’t exist prior to that social network’s inception. The raison d’etre of a nonprofit social network is to engage with a nonprofit and without a lot of activities that are centered around actually working with a nonprofit in some capacity on a networking site… well, I can understand the sudden dropoff in traffic.
Nonprofits are insufficiently incentivized to expand operations enough to adopt these new sites not because it’s a new paradigm but because they’ve already got plenty of people in their social network willing to pitch in to the cause. The issue here isn’t that nonprofits are too lazy or too dumb to “get it”, but that they “got it” a long time ago. Every reasonably interesting nonprofit already has an active social network so there’s no real reason to go out on the web and engage with what seem to be random individuals floating in cyberspace.
There’s a chicken and egg conundrum here, nonprofits don’t see the ROI on working with a social network and the social network simply won’t grow without participation by nonprofits. And nonprofits will only participate if they see their peers kicking their butt in the social networking world and that their peers are deriving material benefits from those associations. I would suggest that these new social networks lengthen their timelines to sustainability or profitability and really consider building thicker relationships with nonprofits and handhold them into this new world.
Loading ...
pfffft, screw that guy. that site already exists.
http://www.losethelabel.org
although I bet Sean has a lot more money than we do. not being bitter, just stating that he starts out with a tech industry advantage.
we have an activism industry advantage.
anyway, good commentary in your article. dead on about nonprofits not having any incentive to create these networks. it’s pretty redundant for them. but individual activists and bloggers could use a collection point where activism is encouraged/facilitated and training is readily available, and LtL is perfectly set up for that (even in our infancy). imho, this guy sean agape can launch his site as hard as he wants and it’s still gonna be inferior to us, a bunch of college students and recent grads just f’kin around with prewritten code and activism 101 tactics.
“they’ve already got plenty of people in their social network willing to pitch in to the cause.”
Huh? Most nonprofits think they already have enough donors? Please explain!
What I mean by this is that most nonprofits have plenty of volunteers or volunteers-in-waiting. The problem is accommodating them all. These folks generally speaking don’t go to social networks to talk about a nonprofit. They want to do work. You need to bridge the mindsets together and that requires work on the nonprofit. You wanna talk about the ultimate data silo — it’s offline vs. online.
Allan, I think you fail to factor in a very important variable into your equation with existing non-profits. This variable is the current level of dissatisfaction with existing mainstream non-profit organizations, which tap people’s time, energy and money with little to no results. How many people have been asked by Move-on to call or fax their representative? I know people who are fed-up with traditional activism and are search for new innovative ways to work together and to be effective. There is a large market out there of disaffected people, and a properly positioned online property could capture this market very very quickly, where they have relationships with existing non-profits and there members or not. Ultimately, it’s about performance.
Hmm… I’d LIKE to think so and I sense you’re right intuitively but I don’t see any hard facts behind the assertion. I’d love to think it IS about performance but I have yet to see these “disaffected” people actually show up anywhere, offline or online. Having been in the nonprofit sector for only five years doesn’t really qualify me to second your assertion but I don’t see how an online property could capture that market quickly. I mean, what does a non-profit activist organization composed of disaffected activists look like? Moveon.org was originally that, no? What about Yearlykos? What about one.org? Does that count? Do you have a sense as to what it would look like?
I am a completely avid reader and so incredibly excited when anyone blogs on NP’s and tech, but as someone who has spent the last 10 years in nonprofits, national and state wide, and only this year turned thirty, I feel that I finally have got to put my two cents into the equation.
Bright eyed and bushy tailed and start struck by my progressive activist fore-mothers, I made the same mistake i think you are making. I said a good organization with a good mission is bigger than its people - and it’s just not the case. people is what makes the movement move. No organization is above it’s members. And so I must respectfully disagree. I dont think that anyone needs to be tip toeing around the NP’s to build thicker relationships with them and hand hold with them. The NP’s, quite honestly, need to come to the people. I think the same people have been running the show for 25 years and are a little control-freaky about their movement. Worse, they have ‘paid their dues’, and expect the next generation of technology and activists to come to them.
1:”can these new social networks eventually outweigh in importance existing off-line social networks at nonprofits?
absolutely. what NP’s DONT want to tell you is the average age of their donors. they have a good 10-20 years before their memberships are going to die off. No kidding. And I think that some of the ones running the show have completely forgotten what it is like to be a busy college student - especially one these days. Younger folk are moonlighting and holding down low paying jobs with little to no health care. We dont have the the time we used to have. Social networking is taking the place of the coffee shops, the drum circles, and the church meetings of yesterday. And it’s our job to go to THEM, its the first rule of progressive activism - you have to go to where your target is, not have your target go to you.
Also, I dont think the nonprofit generates the issues in the media. As usual, the young people tend to. And as for facebook and Linked in - again, that was the younger generation of professionals and college students - nonprofits had nothing to do with it at all. I know noone on my boards nationally or state wide knows about facebook or linked in.
I agree with you that nonprofits cannot benefit from social networking when they are not connected more closely to those cyberspace networks. But I disagree that it is the social networking that is disconnected from a nonprofit s”supernode”. I believe there is this rich new generation of leaders bumping into each other in social networking, and that the nonprofits are failing to go in there and provide the experience and knowledge that can make them the supernodes they once were and could be again, rather than the paper tigers they currently strive to be.
LOL — Suzannah, I share much of your viewpoint about social networks and nonprofits. However, I’m a realist and I know that working with nonprofits requires much longer lead times than one would normally expect. My advice was actually more directed at social networks such as change.org which are finding it difficult to gain traction by attracting the nonprofits themselves. Just take a look at the issue areas on change.org — you’ll find sluggish activity because the prime mover or supernode in the network is missing and that’s the nonprofit itself.
It’s more of an observation about the nature of social networks but of course, there’s the notion that nonprofits aren’t doing more to become the supernode. And that insight is correct and one I share. How does a change.org or glowfish.org solve that problem? I have no idea besides trying to convince the ED to commit resources towards social networking. This is frankly, very difficult. Despite all the work in the last decade, smaller nonprofits are still not seeing the need for an electronic marketing position in their development department DESPITE the growth we’re seeing in online donations.
You tell me — what’s the fix?
I think Navari is right about the potential of the disaffacted. And you can sense some reasons for that disaffection from the NGO attitude that Suzannah describes.
The Genocide Information Network strikes me as a nice example of how fast growth can be based around social networking that largely bypasses the traditional orgs.
I agree with Allen that activist-focussed networks are struggling, but i’m sure it’s important to get away from the corporate sites (which, like shopping malls, are only pseudo-public spaces).
Social networks are a global and growing phenomenon, despite the digital divide, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens as they collide with different cultural contexts.
One thing’s for sure - a lot of the young people outside the West are even more in need of the social changes that the NGOs claim to embody. And if they’re not delivering, whether it’s because of their agility deficit or their command-and-control model, then something else will emerge…
FYI, i’ve posted some more notes at social networking and social change.
dan
Heya,
I completely agree with you! My rant was more of a rant towards the ceo’s in question. tee hee.
I don’t think that the nonprofits are the supernodes anymore. Mostly because they spend way too much time list gathering and not doing a whole lot of the things that really produce change. having a list of donors doesnt do a whole lot. having a list of voters who have been id’d as 1.) in support of your cause and 2.) willing to vote on the basis of it, now that does a lot. going to the governors ball may get you some press, but it isnt going to move a legislator to release funding. however, getting an arsenal of people to the legislators office may get him to release the funding.
cute change.org. i want to pat them on the head.
what they are missing is some SERIOUS strategy in their staff. It’s honestly the same thing that nonprofits are missing. people who know the importance of lists to legislators. people who know things like:
1. one handwritten letter is equal to 50 people who feel that way, vote that way and didnt write a letter (seriously. legislators have staff who calculate this stuph)
2. a phone call makes you twice as likely to do something, a piece of mail makes you three times, and a knock on the door makes you four times as likely to do something - the something being vote, be a member, write a legislator, make a donation, whatever.
this is what i mean.
change.org needs more than nonprofits - it needs some serious ACTIVISTS, what it is missing is the same thing that nonprofits are missing, the toolbox section that is readily available, readily accessible and easily dispersed amongst the youth.
the youth will take action. you just have to give them to tools. right now, we just ask them to fill up our rallies and donor lists. and we wonder why they think they are effective when they ‘boycott voting’. we havent taught them anything!!
just my 2 cents.
You have my heartfelt agreement on this issue. However, change.org needs to be given more time to work these sorts of things out. I think social networks for nonprofits can work but they have to be given time to sort it all out. As you well know, there’s a tremendous amount of cultural lag in the nonprofit sector. It will take years for people in our sector to adopt these tools as e-advocacy is not as clear a killer app as e-mail was. That’s our daily fight and that’s change.org’s immense strategic burden. It takes a long time to turn the ship of nonprofit strategy around.
So let me tell you my new idea for a nonprofit. it goes like this:
I am going to start one in my state. I left the presidency of my last nonprofit due to disagreements in terms of ‘turning the ship of np strategy around’. I wanted to. They didn’t. I brought in 9, count ‘em, NINE! talented, brilliant young feminists into the leadership, the youngest board the org had ever seen, with talent in web design, organizing, lobbying, college recruitment, group dynamics, event planning, etc., but I will be damned if the other 20 (yes my board was that big) didnt chase them away!
Youth are dying for a chance to have internships that are more than data entry. Most NP’s have them there doing what is essential volunteer work (stuffing envelopes) and not intern work, which should fall just under paid position work but above volunteer work. And there are a ton of professionals out there looking for tax breaks or just a do-good way to spend their retirement. Our plan is to take the professionals in all those things I mentioned above, and plan something like Best Buy’s Geek Squad - where we meet with a nonprofit - figure out what they need in terms of list management, databases, crm, web design, organizing, marketing, fund raising, finance planning etc., and put together a squad for them. The grunt work of event planning, database management, press releases, web work, etc., can be done by the interns who desperately need real world experience. The board would have one person in each of the above specialties, and would recruit people from their field to volunteer their time (and later deduct it!) to planning these initiatives for the np’s.
It’s that sort of thing that change.org needs. A geek squad of planners and an army of interns.
-Suzannah
Allan, I don’t think we’ll have any hard facts because non-profits generally have such a poor understanding of the value that they deliver to their constituents and their constituents attitudes toward them. Perhaps the only metric head office pays attention to to member donations. So, until NP’s start doing the same kind of research on their constituents as private companies perform on their customers, then only have anecdotal data available to backup my claim.
Unfortunately, the disaffected people have not “shown-up anywhere” because their is no where for them to show up to….yet. You are correct that Move-on initially captured this disaffected market, and their growth rate was unparalleled in the NP sector. But my anecdotal information tell me that a significant segment of Move-on’s constituents are dissatisfied with results.
My argument is that when an appealing organizational structure arises with strategies that can be effective, we will witness a mass emigration from traditional NP’s, which as you said, are extremely slow to react and change. The clue is in what Suzannah said, namely that “people is what makes the movement move.” I believe the organizations that will capture this disaffected market are those that do no operate under the command-and-control model. As you have so aptly stated, current NP’s are extremely slow to react. So, I expect that these new models will be developed by NP outsiders and by people like Suzannah - former NP execs disenfranchised by a system that puts more energy into accommodating board members, foundations, and VIPs than it does the constituents it serves. The new organizations will be agile, smart, aware, and effectively run by the “people they serve.”
I don’t see how existing NP’s will be able to compete, effectively disaggregating their command-and-control model into a practical and effective social network. Too many egos, to much hierarchy in existing NP’s will cause them to simply bolt-on a social network application to their existing model. But pretending to be a true social network will only work with some constituents, as many will be driven to true flat network where they feel they can actively contribute.
Wow Navari, those are great comments. Folks, I want to thank you all for this comments thread. It seems to have elicited the longest running thread on the site. I just got back from the Personal Democracy Forum today and the insights on this thread I think are a lot more useful than the things I was hearing at the breakout sessions.
It’s strange but the intersection of politics, nonprofits and their issues are very rarely talked about at conferences. I think it’s all background material that nobody likes to talk about because well… it feels unseemly to do so because the nonprofit’s mission is still important despite its ineffective e-advocacy and e-marketing efforts. The deep background that we all agree on seems to be that nonprofit executives are fairly ill-equipped to deal with this sea change in technology and political attitudes. If all of you on this thread don’t mind, contact me at abenamer@nonprofittechblog.org. I’d like to toss some ideas at you in private and see what you think. They’re all related to the nonprofit startup I’m a part of.
[...] Non-Profit Tech Blog » Another social network for activism on the horizonâ?&brv… - “can these new social networks eventually outweigh in importance existing off-line social networks at nonprofits?” [...]