Social Media 101 for Conference Planners

One of my pet peeves is the lost opportunity at many conference to connect with people who are interested but couldn't attend. Some conference planners think of this lack of connection as an air of exclusivity, when really it is just a missed chance to build buzz and fill more seats next year. James Walker at Brazen Careerist talks about this lost opportunity at the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference: From James: If you were out and about in the DC area over the past weekend, I would expect you to know that the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) just hosted their 2009 Annual Legislative Conference, but I wouldn’t expect you to know what happened there.

Why? I don’t think the CBC used social media as much as they could have to promote the conference, the people in attendance, the issues being discussed and the solutions created.

Only a small group of people can attend conferences like these, but to create the change that needs to occur, many more people need to be informed and engaged. Social media can help achieve that goal.

Though I could not attend, I tried my best to catch up on what was discussed, but it was not particularly easy. Honestly, if I wanted to party, I would have had no problem gathering that info on Twitter, but for some reason, the pure content or true substance of the meeting was hard to find.

Okay, so I’ve pointed out the social media #FAIL. Now I’d like to give a quick list of my PR Prescriptions on how the CBC could have better utilized social media to connect with people to provide more real time coverage.

* Official Tweeters

* Official Bloggers

* Media Partnerships

* Create a site to Build on the Discussion

Read the rest of the details of how social media could be better harnessed here.

I (Heart) Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins

I have been going through some of the videos from the Momentum Conference that the Tides Foundation put on earlier this month and I have been completely blown away. They have pulled together some amazing thinkers and so far Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins has been my favorite. She is the new Director of Green For All, the organization that Van Jones started, and she has an amazing understanding of how to make change happen. Her full video is here but I also love the short clip above from Green for All that shows why green jobs are important in a visceral way. Each of our organizations has a powerful story to tell, we just need to be creative about how to get those messages out there.

Not your Mama’s Philanthropy

Philanthropists are pretty comfortable talking about how diversity of staff improves their foundation's grantmaking. We have sessions at the COF conference where we talk about exemplary foundations that went beyond their comfort zone and hired someone with a different racial background and the foundation presidents will go on and on about how suddenly the foundation had new connections in the community and a fresh perspective as deliberations were being made. Then the audience will start to get into the conversation and regale the rest of the audience with stories about how their foundation took these diversity conversations even farther and starting looking at how many women vs. men were on their boards, or how they made an effort to find a LGBT staff member, or how it is important to have people with disabilities or even different political perspectives on staff to stretch our thinking and improve our collective decision-making. Our differences are what make our work better and the crowd cheers. Then I ask the panelists "where does diversity in age, not number of years foundation experience, but diversity of age, fit into this conversation?" The panelists grimace, the moderator moves on to the next question and the age question gets left on the table again. When I ask this question in smaller settings, the common refrain is "gen x and gen y don't want to pay their dues" and "you don't just come in at age 30 and get a foundation job, it is a reward for a long career in nonprofits."  In the diversity conversation it is not ok to say "don't ask that question, you are going to make the panelists feel too white" but it is definitely ok to say "don't ask that question, you are going to make the panelists feel too old."

So how does the presence of multiple generations in a foundation improve grantmaking?

Different generations have different perspectives and different life experiences. Someone who graduated from high school in 2000, has a different perspective on the education system than someone who graduated from high school in 1965. Foundations that are making education grants would benefit if they had both of those experiences on staff. One could tell you about the pitfalls of re-segregating schools, the other could talk to you about the security realities of a post-Columbine school. Both perspectives are important and add depth to your deliberations.

A pipeline of leadership in your organization strengthens your foundation and the field. The hardest leadership trait to hire for is a matching value set.  Having a multigenerational staff ensures that as more and more of your staff become retirement age, there are staff available that understand the organizational culture and values and have been prepared to assume leadership.

Different generations have different skill sets.  A Baby Boomer program officer who has been with a foundation for many years might better understand some of the historical foundation relationships, a Generation X or Y staff member may have more comfort with technology or a more robust professional network.  Both perspectives are important.

 Has generational diversity been a topic of conversation at your foundation? What are some of the barriers and opportunities you are seeing as a result of generational shifts?

Trista Harris is Executive Director of the Headwaters Foundation, the blogger behind New Voices of Philanthropy, and co-chair of the Council on Foundation's Next Generation Task Force.

Holy Crap, that's a great idea!

I've been reading Bill Somerville's book Grassroots Philanthropy: Field Notes of a Maverick Grantmaker with great interest over the last few days. Bill's belief is that all of the paperwork and bureaucracy of philanthropy prevents us from achieving our purpose of helping the community. His most important principal for grantmaking is to locate outstanding people doing important work. I know all of this should be grantmaking 101 but this lesson seems to have been forgotten as we are buried under our piles of grant reviews. All of this of wonderful and I highly recommend that you read the book because if we all slightly changed our practices and spent more time in the community it would have an amazing impact, but that is not what made me say "holy crap, that's a great idea" and run to write this blog post. In the chapter on grantmaking with speed and grace (I love that description!), Bill describes how his foundation, Philanthropic Ventures, has prepared for disaster grantmaking. They are located in San Francisco where the threat of earthquakes are real. The foundation has identified 10 organizations that they have worked with over the years that have outstanding leadership and has a long track record of working with the poor. They have signed a letter of understanding with each organization starting that "in the event of a major earthquake, flood, fire, or other disaster", they have immediate access to $25,000 for the first 4 days following the event.  The organizational leaders can use their personal credit cards for anything necessary to alleviate pain and suffering. Nothing has to be approved by the foundation 1st and the charges will be paid by the foundation before they are due.

What an amazingly simple and powerful idea. So much time is spent after a disaster figuring out the fundraising plan, rather than providing services that are so desperately needed. What is your local disaster risk? We are a flood and tornado state (with a slight chance of bridge collapse) and there are many partners  that our geographic community foundations have worked with over the years that would be much more effective if this type of arrangement was in place.

Who would your foundation work with in a disaster and what is stopping your institution from developing those relationships now?

The Data on Martyrdom

Dan Pallotta is the author of Uncharitable and has been writing columns for Harvard Business on how the current nonprofit model actually makes it nearly impossible for our work to be successful, an issue that is near and dear to my heart. His most recent article is about nonprofit pay. An excerpt is below:

In what can only be called an effort to maintain a culture of martyrdom, when all else fails, traditionalists argue that higher compensation offerings in the nonprofit sector will not attract better talent. This effort at argument is actually progress. They used to simply declare that it was immoral for anyone to make money in the nonprofit sector. When confronted with the notion that this might restrict progress, because higher salaries would attract leaders who can achieve greater impact for those in need, they resort to the argument that money makes no difference. People do this work out of love of humanity and receive psychic benefit in return. Money will only contaminate things, attract greedy people, and we wonʼt get any better impact. The worldʼs most urgent problems are immune to financial incentive.

Then they ask for data: "Show me where high salary packages have attracted better leadership." Clairvoyant data, I would call it. How can you show anyone data on the success of a practice thatʼs not permitted? The demand for data on a paradigm that doesnʼt yet exist is always the status quoʼs last defense. Itʼs an epidemic in the nonprofit sector. The sector requires data before anyone can sneeze. Imagine how long it would have taken to launch Disneyland in a nonprofit setting. Weʼd still be waiting for the data. But there are some data that might serve as a proxy. A Goldwater Institute paper on the merits of six-figure teacher salaries found that 7th grade South Korean students scored 21% better on math scores than their American peers, despite the fact that average South Korean classes are twice as large as average American classess — 49:23. They found that the quality of the teachers mattered much more than the class size.

Read the rest of the article here.