Nonprofit

I think that most organizations are a little bit afraid of video. And if they are a little bit afraid of video they are even more afraid of live video.  Video, the conventional wisdom goes, is expensive and hard to produce. Your chances of doing it wrong are higher than of doing it right, and either way the cost and time involved is probably out of reach. Live video, well that is just crazy talk! Anything could happen!

As we all know, the cost of video cameras has come way down, the once much heralded inexpensive Flip camera is now obsolute because of smartphones with high quality video cameras! And editing technology has also become cheaper and easier. For years now every Mac has shipped with iMovie, but today you can edit video with a range of online services including YouTube.

Video engages people. How many times a day do you want a few minutes of video on the web? That clip from the Daily Show, a segment from the local news, something on YouTube (perhaps involving a cute animal) a friend posted to Facebook? Or maybe you were glued to live streaming of the #occupy demonstrations this fall?

How can nonprofit organizations make use of video easily, and without great expense, to connect with their audiences? My, perhaps counter intuitive answer, is through live streaming. Yes, jump in on the deep end.  With live streaming video there is no post production necessary, just a camera and an internet connection. UStream has garnered much press because of the #occupy movements and it is a great platform, scales well, offers some good tools, but it also requires a bit more setup than, say, Google+ Hangouts.  

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Yesterday I wrote about a recent study suggesting that millions of baby boomers want to start their own nonprofit organizations or social ventures. This morning I returned to a tab opened in my browser a day or two ago, an article on the Harvard Business Review blog, "Don't let What You Know Limit What You Imagine."  I'd highly encourage reading it, but for now I will draw some connections between it and my post yesterday.

The author, Bill Taylor, references a book by Cynthia Barton Rabe, The Innovation Killer, in which she talks about how experience in a field can become a detriment to innovation and success. Her answer is that organizations should hire "zero-gravity thinkers," innovators "who are not weighed down by the expertise of a team, its politics, or 'the way things have always been done.'"

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Today I was reminded of the Derek Sivers TED talk "How To Start A Movement" in which he analyzes a popular YouTube video of a guy dancing on a hillside at music festival. What reminded me of this video, and its lessons was an opinion piece in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, "Calling All Boomers: Don't Start More Nonprofits". 

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CivicActions is very pleased to announce the release of The Agile NonProfit: A Quick Start Guide to Iterative Web Development today. The Guide is a concise and illustrated explanation of the Agile/Scrum web development framework that anyone can quickly read and "get" Agile.

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The 3rd Annual CLASSY Awards is the largest philanthropic awards ceremony in the country, recognizing outstanding philanthropic achievements by charities and individuals nationwide.

From now until June 19, America can visit www.classyawards.org to nominate in the following categories:

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Recently I worked with Grantmakers In The Arts, a national association of private and public funders making grants to artists and arts, to provide training on how they can get the most out of their CiviCRM database. In this post I am going to explain one specific bit of functionality that I helped them think through: managing grants that they receive (as opposed to give).

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In preperation for DrupalCon this week, we produced this video reel showcasing a partial list of our current clients, as of March 2011.

How many times have you been caught off-guard when a stranger asks what you do for work?

Describing your work can be a very difficult task. Do you paint a picture of the amazing programs or services your nonprofit provides? Do you speak about the impact on the communities you serve? Or perhaps you share specifically about your own role in the organization and the many hats that you wear?

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On the heals of our recently released survey that looked at foundations and their websites, I spoke with one of our clients, John Theodore, a Technology Officer at the Annenberg Foundation, about their choice to go with Drupal for their website redesign. The Annenberg Foundation, founded in 1989, provides funding and support to nonprofit organizations in the United States and globally. They have a number of web properties that serve different aims and programs. The Foundation decided to begin migrating their web properties from a variety of mostly proprietary or home-grown systems to Drupal in 2010. The work is ongoing and CivicActions is working with the Foundation on the project.

Why Open Source?

John admitted to something of a bias against proprietary systems based on the Foundation's experiences as well as his own personal history as a developer and vendor. Proprietary systems often don't communicate well with each other and thus become their own silos. Vendor and support options are also more limited for proprietary systems.

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This morning I read Robin Dunbar's op-ed in the New York Times, You've Got To Have (150) Friends, and it got me thinking more about Jumo (read my initial thoughts on Jumo).  The author's research into the capacity of people to maintain friendships has resulted in the concept of Dunbar's Number: that humans can really only maintain 150 relationships with other humans, regardless of what technology purports to allow.

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