Here's the presentation I gave with Sloane Berrent at Sustainatopia in Miami on April 4, 2011. It's geared toward social good organizations, from nonprofits to social enterprises.

1. Move the Needle!
How to mobilize your
supporters to take action
 A Socialbrite Bootcamp 
JD Lasica Sloane Berrent
@jdlasica
@sloane
Sustainatopia April 4, 2011

2. What we’ll cover today
Part 1: Social media ecosystem
Part 2: Advocacy campaigns with impact
Part 3: 12 steps to activate your supporters
Part 4: Community tools for social change
Wrapup: Summary & next steps

3. Relax!
Creative Commons
photo on Flickr
by Nattu
resources: http://bit.ly/movetheneedle

4. Today’s hashtag
Creative Commons
photo on Flickr
by Prakhar
Tweet this talk! Hashtag: #moveneedle

5. Glossary for new terms
“ Social media:
Any online technology or practice that lets us share
(content, opinions, insights, experiences, media)
and have a conversation about the ideas we care about.
”
http://socialbrite.org/glossary

6. 8 color handouts! Be happy!
http://bit.ly/movetheneedle

7. 1. ECOSYSTEM
Types of social media
• Blogs
• Social networks
• Microblogs (Twitter)
• Online video (YouTube,
Vimeo, Viddler)
• Widgets
• Photo sharing (Flickr,
Photobucket, etc.)
• Podcasts
• Virtual worlds
• Wikis
• Social bookmarking
• Forums
• Presentation sharing

8. Social media: Dizzying growth
77% US adults are frequent social media users.*
141 million active blogs (vs. 12,000 in 2000); almost 1 million blog
posts created per day; over 346 million people globally read blogs
6 of top 10 websites in US are social sites (YouTube, Facebook,
Wikipedia, Blogger, Craigslist, Twitter)
Flickr: 35 million people, 4 billion-plus photos
Wikipedia: 10 million users have contributed
18 million articles
YouTube: 2 billion videos streamed per day
Text messages per day: 4.5 billion
(vs. 400,000 in 2000)
Whenever someone opens a computer, 60% of time it’s for social
reasons.
*source: Nielsen Online, spring 2010

9. Revolutionizing revolutions
Egypt: 18 days from Facebook-organized protest to Mubarak’s fall
Facebook group One Million Voices Against FARC mobilized 10 million
people to march against FARC in hundreds of cities in Colombia
Different outcome in Iran & Myanamar

10. Facebook: The social network
Nearly 600 million members worldwide —
71.2% of US Internet users are on Facebook

11. Twitter: Steady growth
295% annual growth rate in U.S., 300,000 new users/day
— and 30 billion tweets

12. Search your heart & soul
Before we talk tools, technology or campaigns, do a
self-assessment with your team.
Why are you doing this?
What core values drive your
organization?
What change would you like
to see in the world?
Is there clarity about what your
organization is trying to achieve?
Why should people care?
Do you have an idea worth spreading?

13. 2 . A D V O C A C Y C A M PA I G N S
Types of cause campaigns
1. Raise awareness, build authority for
your cause or enterprise
2. Sign up new members
3. Raise funds, solicit micro-loans
4. Sign online petitions
5. Spur offline action: enlist people to
attend an event or call Congress
6. Find new volunteers or ambassadors
7. Grow a mailing/newsletter list
8. Attract new Facebook or Twitter
followers
9. Ask people to create content for you

14. CASE STUDY
No on 8 Wedding Registry
1,700 couples raised $1 million+ for Equality California

15. CASE STUDY
SMA: Tweet for a Cure
2,907 people have tweeted reaching 1.6 million followers
http://gwendolynstrongfoundation.org/twitter

16. CASE STUDY
Grassroots Mapping
Balloon aerial images of Gulf Oil Spill funded by Kickstarter
grassrootsmapping.org

17. CASE STUDY
charity:water & Twestival
charity:water: making a difference in Honduras

18. CASE STUDY
Causeitsmybirthday.com
7 days, 7 cities, $19,347 donated for malaria nets

19. CASE STUDY
Crisis mapping
Members of the Japanese OpenStreetMap community
launched an Ushahidi platform for Japan just hours after
the devastating earthquake struck the country.

20. CASE STUDY
Greenpeace & Nestlé
Boycott Nestlé pages on Facebook

21. CASE STUDY
Greenpeace & Nestlé
Nestlé Killer microsite

22. CASE STUDY
Greenpeace & Nestlé
Greenpeace bought Google AdWords for Nestle & Greenpeace

23. CASE STUDY
Greenpeace & Nestlé
Nestlé waves the white flag

24. Other dream campaigns
National Wildlife Federation raised $100,000
using social media after Gulf Oil Spill. Concert
fundraisers raised nearly $50,000.
Red Cross’s Text Haiti campaign raised $32
million. Oxfam UK received $50,000 via link in
YouTube video posted day after Haiti quake.
Salvation Army text2give donations in 2010:
$17,000. Mobile donations in 7 days after
Japan quake: $130,000.

25. 3 . 1 2 S T E P S T R AT E G Y
12 steps to mobilize your cause
1. First, listen and observe
2. Set clear goals & define metrics
3. Define a clear theme
4. Frame it with a personal story
5. Create lightweight media
6. Create a simple call to action
7. Create a conversation hub for participants
8. Generate an Attention Wave
9. Find your champions! Turn influencers into evangelists
10. Use immediacy & urgency: Headlines & deadlines
11. Consider a mobile component
12. Create real-world events

26. 1. Create a listening post
Set up a listening post
(monitoring dashboard)
to track what’s being
said about your
organization or cause.
Listen before engaging.
Deputize folks to do this.
Supplement with a social
media dashboard.
Engage before the Ask
Deeper dive—monitoring: http://bit.ly/movetheneedle

27. 2. Set goals, map metrics
Goals Metrics to measure
Grow email list of supporters # newsletter, RSS subscribers
Increase comments on blog avg. # comments/post
Increase website visibility increase in traffic or linkback #s
Increase positive mentions mentions in social networks
of brand or cause
Have visitors stick around stick rate, bounce rate
Make our content more viral # of shares
Get people to take action # of petition signatures
Get people to attend event # of registrants, year over year
Deeper dive—metrics: http://bit.ly/movetheneedle

28. 3. Define a clear theme
Boil down your cause to a strong, single sentence
Vittana:
Help anyone go to college
Alter Eco:
Support fair trade
ActBlue:
Elect progressive candidates
DonorsChoose:
Support public classrooms in need

29. Break!
Creative Commons
BY photo on Flickr
by Tom@HK

30. 4. Find the emotional center
Tell a personal story — use videos or photos to make us feel
invisiblepeople.tv

31. Stories of hope
Credit: Skid Row Housing Trust / Project 50, Los Angeles
Ed Givens, 30 years on Skid Row ... ... and today.
100khomes.org from Common Ground

32. 100,000 Homes
Credit: Project H3, Phoenix
Donna, on the streets ... ... on now on her apt’s coop board.

33. 5. Create lightweight media
Room to Read: Winner of TechSoup Storytelling Challenge
Deeper dive—media: http://bit.ly/movetheneedle

34. 6. Create conversation hub
Where will you engage with supporters?
Your blog Community site (WiserEarth)
Facebook Social hub (Change.org)
Twitter Contest site
Deeper dive—community: http://bit.ly/movetheneedle

35. Enable conversation anywhere
Avoid BugMeNot Syndrome!
Lower the barriers to people talking about your
cause by using third-party authentication
services.
Left: SpokenWord.org with multiple log-in
options.
Top: The new Facebook Comments on
HowStuffWorks.

36. Conversation, not marketing

37. 7. Create a call to action
Inspire people to act with clear, motivating steps

38. 8. Generate an Attention Wave
Use social love handles to socialize your campaign

39. 9. Find your champions!
Use your listening post to identify high-value influencers in
your subject area. Then, influence the influencers
Establish a rapport and only then reach out to try to convert
them into evangelists & ambassadors for your cause
Scope out Twitter Lists that intersect with your organization
or social cause
Connect with other social media influencers through their
blogs and other networks
Deeper dive—community: http://bit.ly/movetheneedle

40. 10. Use urgency & immediacy
Headlines & deadlines: Play off the news & use a hard stop date

41. EXERCISE
11. Consider mobile
Mobile lists: Text 'JUSTICE' to 69866
Fair Immigration Reform Movement
Calls to action
Alerts
Feedback loop

42. EXERCISE
Is your site mobile-ready?
Low-cost server-side solutions

43. Attract a swarm!
Create a Foursquare flash mob to unlock the coveted Swarm Badge

44. 12. Meet up in the real world
Meetups, Tweet-ups, concerts, fund-raisers to deepen ties

45. Build an active community
here’s an amazing
difference between building
an audience and building a
community. An audience
will watch you fall on a
sword. A community will fall
on a sword for you.
— Chris Brogan
Author,“Trust Agents”

46. 4. COMMUNITY TOOLS
Use your community!
Flickr photo by
Jason Means
Don’t do all the heavy lifting!
Partner with smart people. Use volunteers.
Use free: Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Creative Commons
Use open source: WordPress (and its plug-ins), etc.

47. Tap into the sharing economy
Free content! Free resources!
Free photos Socialbrite.org/sharing-center
Free videos (eg, TED talks) Creativecommons.org
Free music & audio Techsoup
Free services! Free expertise!
Google Grants BarCamp
YouTube for Nonprofits PodCamp
Google Earth for Nonprofits WordCamp
Social Media
Free software & platforms! Club
WordPress & its plug-ins
Open Office, Google docs
Drupal, Joomla

48. EXERCISE
flickr.com/creativecommons
Creativecommons.org
• Rich source of free
commercial & noncommercial
images
• Flickr: 156 million Attribution,
Noncommercial, No Derivatives
& ShareAlike licenses
• Use them for your blog,
website, email or print
newsletter, presentations, etc.
• Don’t just take. Share!

49. T O O L S
Community video at events
Video + chat = engagement
This is the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, student journalism channel.

50. T O O L S
Grassroots ambassadors
100x100: Estrella Rosenberg & Big Love Little Hearts used
Foursquare & social media to raise $25,000 in 24 hours to give
life-saving screenings to 12 newborns with congenital heart defects

51. T O O L S
The power of 1-to-1 giving
vittana.com, jolkona.com
kiva.com, donorschoose.org

52. T O O L S
Foursquare & nonprofits
Waze integrated check-in functionality from Foursquare to benefit hunger-relief
charity Feeding America during Thanksgiving 2010.

53. T O O L S
Tap into the geo wave

54. T O O L S
Strategic storytelling
Nawaa uses geotagging & Google Earth in Tunisia

55. T O O L S
Darfur & Google Earth
Crisis in Darfur: Using Google Earth

56. EXERCISE
Google Earth’s historical layers
Historic Centre of Warsaw, 1945 & today

57. EXERCISE
Fundraising: Going social
give2gether.com

58. Fundraising: Discrete chunks
give2gether

59. Leveraging social networks
give2gether

60. Numbers reflect network effect

61. T O O L S
Social action hubs
Citizen Effect
Care2
TakePart
WiserEarth
Change.org
Meetup.com
Kickstarter
Idealist
DoSomething
Download 12 Social Action Hubs flyer: http://bit.ly/12socialhubs

62. T O O L S
Do-good widgets
Create a widget on Causes.com or create your own

63. T O O L S
Other tools you can use
Social Actions: Open API enables organizations & bloggers
to volunteer or take action on the causes they support, can
tailor it to your cause.
The Extraordinaries: Use the power of community for micro-
volunteerism in people’s spare time.
Word visualizations: Free at-a-glance visualizations from
Wordle.net & ManyEyes (manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com)
OpenStreetMap: Open source “Wikipedia of maps”;
community builds own maps using GPS & donated satellite
imagery.

64. Open data, open APIs
Illustration by Mike Lemanski for Google

65. T O O L S
Use open gov data
Data tools, data sets at data.ed.gov

66. Data visualization & transparency
Indianapolis Museum of Art
http://dashboard.imamuseum.org/

67. Innovate!
"Rocket Man" on Flickr
by Dave-F
“We have to change our entire corporate-industry behavior.
We’ve got to stop overplanning and over-analyzing and turn
our battleship into a speedboat.”
—J. Todd Foster, managing editor, Bristol (VA) Herald Courier
Dare to fail. If you’re not failing at something, you’re doing
something wrong. (“Fail often, fail fast.”)

68. T O O L S
Move the Needle toolkit
What you’ll find at bit.ly/movetheneedle
24 online fundraising sites
Top cause organizations
Free reports
Free photo, music, video directories
Collaboration & project management tools
Geolocation tools
Free tutorials on the best way to use
Facebook, Twitter & blogs
How to use mobile strategically
Tons more. All free & shareable.

69. Biggest resource: Your supporters

70. Let’s continue the conversation!
JD Lasica, Socialbrite.org
jd@socialbrite.org
Twitter: @jdlasica
Sloane Berrent, Answer With Action
sloane@thecausemopolitan.com
Twitter: @sloane
Presentation, resources at http://bit.ly/movetheneedle