NonProfit Tweeting and Social Media

Social Media is a wonderful arena that can be used for Non-Profit organizations. Fund raising, awareness to the cause, information about events are all good reasons to belong to twitter and other social media sites. Being a responsible 'twitterer' is of the utmost importance. Separating personal from professional tweets and posts can be a challenge and a debate. Personal opinion can make you look human but it can also have adverse effects.

I found this article written by Valerie Venezia, VP of Membership and Marketing, New York Council of Nonprofits, Inc.

Do You Have a Social Media Policy? – Smart Nonprofit Tweeting

May 27, 2009

And Other Social Media Policy Thoughts

Thanks to guest writer, Valerie Venezia, VP of Membership and Marketing, New York Council of Nonprofits, Inc. While Tweeting, I found their organization policy on social media and asked her to write about the process for this blog. Links to Valerie, the policy and her twitter profile are included in the post. Thanks Valerie!

I’ll never forget the email that started it all. It was from our senior staff attorney. (We are blessed with three of them…) I don’t know about you, but I never want to get those. The more I can dodge the minefield of lawyerly engagement (other than a “Hi, How are you?” in the hall) the better. But this email I could not avoid. If you’re a Harry Potter fan, you can liken it to a “Howler.”

Nicely put, he wanted to know if I realized that within one click of our nonprofit’s website our members (and other visitors) could get to a Twitter profile with the unsavory language he was now demonstrating for me in his email.

Yes, I had crashed the proverbial flying car into the Whomping Willow.

My first reactions were defensive. My mind produced highly logical arguments like “no one would hold us responsible for that,” or “people can get to unsavory language within a click of any website,” or my personal favorite “you just don’t understand Twitter.” Well, duh. No, he didn’t. But that also meant that
a) neither did the vast majority of our audience and
b) it was my fault he didn’t.
I was our social media “evangelist” – and I couldn’t avoid our lawyers forever. It was time to engage, educate and maybe even adjust my own thinking about Twitter and social media.

After we both apologized and had that uncomfortable verbal “hug” we got down to business. The bottom line that we could both agree on was that protecting our nonprofit organization was of the utmost importance. A large part of my job is to get the “word” out about our organization and to get people to ACT (join, donate, come to events, etc.) Part of our marketing strategy is using certain social media tools. The inherent nature of these tools is that they are “open” and, for the most part, they give the control of the message over to the user. That’s why they are powerful. That’s why they can be great for nonprofits. And that’s why they can be scary too.

We agreed on a few other things. The Twitter account that we were using for our organization had actually started as my “own.” Though my life does revolve around my job, I did follow some unrelated individuals and organizations. (Do our members need to click through and see I follow Stephen Colbert? Maybe. Maybe not. But we decided not.) There’s a difference between personal branding around the knowledge, expertise and connections you have in your professional life, and your personal brand of pop culture idiosyncrasies. Some organizations may not see it this way – perhaps you feel that this makes your organization or staff more well rounded and “human” in the eyes of your audience and therefore more relatable. For our organization, we felt it was best to keep that separate – while still trying to maintain a personal “feel” on our organizational Twitter feed. Each organization will have to make this choice for itself. But it is a choice and the discussion and decision should be made by the appropriate people – and not just the one person on staff who may be enthusiastic enough to keep up on their social media duties.

After asking a few colleagues and realizing no one else had one, and because the need for it was immediate, we came up with a simple, yet effective “Twitter Policy.” Even in its simplicity it addressed our key concerns. By placing it on the homepage under the “follow us” link it:
a) makes people aware that we have a policy for this different type of medium;
b) that we have put thought into our social media presence;
c) that we have tried to proactively protect our organization from liability and
d) hopefully it makes them think about doing the same for their own nonprofit.

Up next on our radar: policies for our blog and Facebook presence as well as a policy for staff using social media in connection with their professional positions here (i.e. posting pictures from official organization events on their own Facebook pages, or personal blogging about their job.) Not that they can’t do these things (hey, if IBM can, we can.) But, again, protection of the organization is priority. We are going to constantly balance that priority against the need to communicate and connect with nonprofits and those that care about them. The days have long since passed when nonprofits could ignore the possibilities of social media. The concept is not a fad, though the tools may change.

If you haven’t already, gather the tools that already exist and think about your own social media policies. Stop the lawyer in the hall and have a conversation about it. Be proactive in protecting the nonprofit organization you work for. The more you recognize the risks, the more you can maximize the rewards of social media.

If you have any questions or would like to connect to Valerie you can find her on Twitter @nycouncilnps or email her at vvenezia@ccsnys.org. You can reach their staff attorney in this story (who said he thinks of himself more as the “Dementor” type) by contacting David Watson, Esq. at dwatson@ccsnys.org. You can reach them both via phone at 1 (800) 515-5012.

www.sageva.com is a Virtual Assistance business that can help you with your Nonprofit back office work regardless of your location. Social media is time consuming and having an employee handle this can hurt your bottom line. Why not partner with a Virtual Assistant a few hours a week? We work on a sliding scale for 501c organizations. Contact Shelley Halpain at shelley@sageva.com or call 916-425-8088.

Websites and other creative endeavors

If you are seeking to build your own website, you have some choices to make. 1) A good hosting company. There are a ton of them out there, ask around to see who other people you know are using. You also have to pick a name. (It is easier to actually buy your domain from whom ever you decide to host with, just for the ease of not having to transfer it.) 2) Once you choose your name and host, now you have to decide how you want to build your site. Do you want to use one of their already made, add your content, ready-set-go sites, or do you want to download a template and make your changes from that, OR do you want to completely build it from scratch?

In working on my third website, www.SageVA.com , I have learned more about building websites than I ever sought. The whole Internet is fascinating to me. There is so much information out there, I cant even begin to know a portion of it. So I stick with my little corner to try and become very good at what little I do know. I use cpanel. That is my favorite way to build a site. It may be for beginners (I don't know) but I think it works just fine, my site doesn't look any 'less' professional than the next. I chose to buy my domain and web hosting with Bravenet.com, I don't know if it is any better than other hosting companies, I do like it better than a few others I have chosen in the past. I like to use free programs and templates because they are as good as the ones you purchase (sometimes better) and I have access. Picasa is the program I like to use for artists galleries, CSS templates is my preference as far as complete site templates go. Many good ones to choose from that can be tweaked and modeled how ever you want. I am also learning zen-cart. A free program in a class of open source commerce, basically a shopping cart but this is the whole shebang, its a little more complicated at first but I'm finding it very user friendly and once you have your whole cart built, the changes are simple. I downloaded Filezilla from Mozilla to use as an FTP client. This will basically up or download giant files for you much faster.

I could go on and on, I guess I have learned more than I thought. If you have any questions, you can contact me. I'm open to helping out. Building your own website is a ton of work but also pretty satisfying when its done. Shelley@sageva.com I wish you much success! If you don't feel like taking the task on, of course I can do it for you (that's my pitch).

I plan on adding links to my cloud computing program so clients can have access straight from my site. I am also adding paypal access.

Flowers, gardening, cleaning, yep its spring

I have spent the past few weeks cleaning up everything from the backyard to my armoire. Doesn't it seem like Winter makes us nest and Spring makes us purge? It is time to store the blankets, winter sweaters, coats and woolly slippers to make room for 'gulp' tank tops, shorts, flip flops, summer dresses and bathing suits. I have a great way to get this done pretty quickly. If your anything like me (maybe its my age) you have 'stuff' that you don't need, don't use, probably will never use but for some reason you keep it because you think that you may have to have it sometime. AND of course as soon as you get rid of it, you do need it. Story of my life! I like to call myself a gentle pack rat, meaning, I do keep way too many items but at the same time I do not have a problem getting rid of things, its just taking the time to actually go through it all.

I start with the bedroom since that is where things tend to accumulate fastest. I use under bed storage boxes, a trash can and a donate bag. EVERYTHING in the dresser comes out. I just pile it on the bed. I then go through each item and decide A)Is it worthy of keeping until next year, B)Is it salvageable and will someone else like this? C) Is it trash? I then throw these items into the respective container. Now, you have to make this fun so set the containers around the room and play basketball with your items, roll them up and jump hoop them across the room (also fun for kids). After this task is done, maybe 30-45 minutes, immediately put the containers where they belong, otherwise you may be tripping over them for the next few weeks (uh, gee no I havent been there).

My office is next, I started that yesterday. 2 trash bags (recyclable, garbage), 2 boxes of giveaway's, 1 giant pile of "shreddable's" later, I am getting near completion. Of course I have to make this fun too and since my husband loves his new super, duper, indestructible shredder, that pile is saved for him. I like to treat that stuff as paper airplanes tossing them "Shred it baby!" In the box of giveaway's I have 2 CD towers that are full of software that is no longer useful to me. Not sure where the CD's are going but the towers are going to WEAVE thrift store. There is a desk lamp I don't use anymore, some file boxes and bins (since I am going totally green and paperless, I don't need space for them anymore. yeah). All of my contact information ie; business cards, flyer's, etc. get entered into my contact database file and then tossed. I have DVD's and Thumb drive's I need to send to client's. Those are sitting in my 'out' box. Wow, this is looking like a nice place to work again! It is 11:00 AM, I am done organizing for today. Well, I still have vegetables to plant....