My colleagues  Howard Greenstein and Tom Watson have authored a new white paper, sponsored by the JK Group and published in cooperation with the Heyman Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising at NYU. In this white paper – Wired Workforce, Networked CSR -  they studied several large American corporations who are using social media and who have found ways to involve employees, customers and stakeholders as they seek to achieve their CSR goals.

Key Findings:

1. Companies are more comfortable using social media tools internally, but they’re waiting for external adoption by marketing before moving ahead to use them in CSR type efforts.
2. Employees seek choice and appreciate democratic participation.
3. Leadership is required to ensure continued participation in corporate giving campaigns, since employee participation is decreasing.
4. Both social media and traditional communications methods are used in employee giving campaigns and external outreach to communities.
5. Formal feedback loops for social media are the exception rather than the rule.

Get your copy here.

Contests on Facebook where fans have to "like" the page in order to enter.

Harry Gold, CEO of Overdrive Interactive and a ClickZ columnist, suggested that while cash giveaways and freebies may be increasingly employed as a like-gating strategy, it's generally an old online marketing trick. "It works on landing pages to get leads," he said. "It works to get people to opt into email lists. And it works to get people to 'like' you on Facebook."

Link: Contests on Facebook

DonorsChoose.org, the online education charity and one of Fast Company’s “50 Most Innovative Companies in the World,” today unveiled Hacking Education: A Contest for Developers and Data Crunchers. For the first time, the organization is making its extensive data public to inspire contestants. Collected over 10 years, the data includes 300,000 classroom project requests from 165,000 teachers across the country, and more than 1,000,000 project contributions. Contestants will develop apps or conduct analyses to be evaluated against a central question: Which app or analysis has the greatest potential to engage the public and impact education?

Link: http://www.donorschoose.org/hacking-education

Some new research published by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence shows that the way to gain Twitter followers is to focus on a few topics.    More from my friend and colleague, Amy Gahran over at CNN

While the Millennial generation has often been characterized as wired always online, or texting addicts, the Millennial Donor Report discovers  that the key motivators to giving are trust, being asked by a friend, and how much they care about the cause.

Some Key Findings:

Giving habits

84% of Millennials said they are most likely to donate when they fully trust an organization, and 90% said they would stop giving if they do not trust an organization.

85% of Millennials are motivated to give by a compelling mission or cause, and 56% by a personal connection or trust in the leadership of the organization. Only 2% of Millennials were motivated to give by celebrity endorsements.

93% of surveyed Millennials gave to nonprofit organizations in 2010, with 10% giving $1,000 or more during the course of the year, but the bulk of giving was distributed in small increments to many organizations. 58% of respondents said their single largest gift was less than $150.

57% of Millennials gave in response to a personal ask and 49% gave online. However, when Millennials were asked how they prefer to give, online giving took the top spot, being identified as the method of choice by 58% of respondents, with personal requests dropping to 48%.

Volunteering

79% of respondents volunteered for organizations in 2010, with the primary obstacle to volunteering being a lack of time, which was noted by 85% of participants who did not volunteer in 2010. 45% of the non-volunteers said they simply weren’t asked to volunteer.

Information gathering

71% of respondents get information about nonprofit organizations through web searches, 62% want to receive information by email, and 56% get information from peers. 33% of Millennials said they use Facebook to gather information on an organization.

 On an organization’s website, 70% of Millennials want to find information about the organization’s mission and history, and 56% want to learn about the organization’s financial condition.

1.)  Create the Story:  We believe that story is currency in the social space.

2.)  Go Deep.  We really want to build a rabbit hole

3.)  Find the Core Audience  Monello noted that “in marketing we think that we want to shout at the widest group of people. You’re better off speaking very closely to a small group rather then shooting broad to a much larger group.”

“Find that core audience and speak to them. … Everyone else will come,” he said.

via True Blood and Social Media

Mayor Booker launched a Causes wish last week to raise money for a state of the art animal shelter in Newark.  As an animal lover, the story is very touching - it is below.   Here's the links:

Wish: http://wishes.causes.com/wishforpatrick
Cause: www.causes.com/patrick

Recently a heinous incident of animal cruelty took place in our city and shocked the world. On March 16th, the day before St. Patrick’s Day, a 1-year-old pit bull was found inside a trash bag, starved and near death after having been thrown down a trash chute. At the time of his rescue by a heroic and caring maintenance worker, he weighed only 20 pounds – less than half of what doctors considered normal weight. After receiving immediate medical attention from the City of Newark’s Animal Control, he was quickly transferred to a trauma unit at Garden State Veterinary Specialists in Tinton Falls, New Jersey where they found him to be severely anemic and malnourished requiring a blood transfusion in order to survive. For his miraculous recovery and the holiday on which he was found, he has been dubbed “Patrick the miracle dog.” Despite his horrific abuse, Patrick is expected to fully recover into a happy, healthy dog.

Patrick’s story is one of countless instances of animal cruelty taking place daily around the world. It is a reminder that many animals suffer appalling abuse, and without our help, cases like this will end even more tragically. It is my hope that through spreading awareness and working together we can help save many of these defenseless animals from abuse and neglect.

For almost two years, my administration has been working hard to establish a state-of-the-art animal shelter in Newark. Thus far, we have identified and readied a site and have architects working on the design. This facility seeks to serve other New Jersey municipalities in Essex and Hudson counties that desperately need other options for housing and caring for homeless animals. By working to build a modern, state-of-the-art shelter through public and private funding, and by employing innovative policies to improve responsible pet care, decrease birthrates, increase adoptions, and help keep animals with their responsible caretakers, we believe that Newark’s animal shelter operations can become a model for the rest of the nation.

For my birthday, my wish is that you join our Cause to help spread awareness of Patrick’s story and animal abuse, and, if possible, contribute toward the construction of “Patrick’s Place” – the animal shelter which we hope to build in the coming years in Newark. Patrick’s abuser claimed she could no longer care for her dog – it is our hope that by providing this additional facility in our city, more animals can be rescued from unnecessary neglect and abuse. Any money we raise not used for this project will be donated to a local organization for the protection and care of animals.

Newark will be known as a city that cares not only about its people, but its animals, too.

If you're unable to donate to my birthday wish today, please join my Cause (http://causes.com/patrick) and help spread the word about this miracle dog.

From UseIt: A single mobile screen with almost no features still required 10 design changes to meet usability guidelines for mobile websites.

1. Fewer features
2. Bigger touch targets.
3. Full headlines
4. Enhanced scannability
5. Even more information scent by showing a short story summary (a "deck") under each headline.
6. Using photos instead of date icons. Not only does this add some visual interest, it further enhances scannability and information scent as many users will recognize their favorite star's face faster than they can read a headline.
7. More Content, Less Scrolling
8. Labeling the drop-down menu instead of simply denoting it by a triangle.

Mobile User Experience Course

Course Outline

Mobile user behaviors:

• What kinds of activities people do on mobile devices
  • Differences between apps and websites
• Browsing for news, entertainment, sports
• Finding specific information (weather, movie times, etc.)
• Transactions (such as online banking and other financial operations)
• Shopping: what do users shop for on mobile
• Designing to support user behaviors

Design strategy considerations:

• Creating a dedicated mobile site vs. having mobile users access your regular website
• Designing for high-end models vs. the lowest common denominator
  • Direct manipulation UI for touchphones (e.g., iPhone, BlackBerry Storm)
  • Indirect manipulation for low-end devices
• Creating a mobile application vs. a mobile website; when to use what
  • Differences in designing an app versus a mobile website

Basic usability guidelines for mobile sites and apps:

• Basic interaction
  • Typing
  • Dropdown Boxes, Buttons, and Links
  • Lists and Scrolling
  • Menus
  • Carousels
• Forms
• Logging In and Registering
• Search
• Navigation and information architecture (IA)
• Errors
• Page layout
• Search
• Homepages
• Images, Animation, and Videos
• Content usability
  • How users read on mobile devices
  • Writing for mobile use
  • Presenting text: legibility and readability
• Designing for feature phones: differences from smartphones and touchphones
• How to perform usability testing with mobile devices

SalesForce acquires Radian 6  via NY Times

The bet on Radian6 is a bet on the Web’s social conversation and the growing need, among corporations, to analyze chatter and engage consumers. The service, which counts companies like Dell, General Electric and PepsiCo as clients, allows businesses to monitor multiple social media streams, like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and personal blogs, and engage with its audience in real time.

Over time, Salesforce.com plans to integrate Radian6’s technology into other parts of its platform. For instance, Salesforce.com’s Chatter service, a private social network for companies, will soon include data from Facebook, Twitter and other external streams.

Download paper here

79% will buy smartphones in the next 2 years
72% open emails more often on their phones, or equally on their phones and computers.
67% prefer a (native) mobile application over a mobile website when it comes to utility functions.
 59% want to receive real time notifications on important updates from nonprofit mobile apps
 15 million tablets were sold in 2010
       

 
2011 is said to be the year of mobile – when smartphones proliferate, feature phones obliterate, and there happens to be an app for just about anything. Who wants a PC when you can have a pocket PC? From mobile email, mobile web browsing, mobile social networking, mobile apps, to mobile “_______” (you name it!), the ‘m-word’ is becoming very widespread.