Things got a bit mixed up because the keynote speaker had travel trouble, but that meant that I got to have a very nice chat with some folks from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation. Again, it’s incredible to me how far off the radar libraries are. Here is an organization in the business of helping projects for the public good and they were surprised to meet a librarian! What a potential and an untapped resource. Lunch was awesome, by the way, thanks for asking!

Keynote by Katya Andresen of Network for Good by Robin Hood Rules: Change the Message; Change the Messenger

Change the outreach message and technology allows us to change the messenger. Paradigm shift.
She’s about taking the things that GM and the for-profit sector are good at and applying it for good instead instead of evil.

Change the message:

It’s not about us, it’s about what we do for our audience.

We need to talk about our users and what we do for them instead of about ourselves.
‘About us’ website - so many nonprofits have self-oriented and self-referenced sites. Organization divided along department lines, mission statements. Instead of considering users (jeez, this sounds familiar).

Example of care’s overhaul of their brand - went from ‘About Us’ to a conversation:

I Am Powerful. She has the power to change her world. You have the power to help her do it.

Care is now inviting potential donors to join this powerful team. All you have to do is provide an email address to start a conversation with people who are not ready to give money. They started with the potential donor and then work back - so they end up with quizzes instead of brochures. It’s collaborative. Donor rate up 60% after the new campaign.

Focus on what we do for other people. What do your audiences care about? If you don’t know, ask them.

Change the messenger:
Seth Godin - turn around the megaphone, get your supporters to talk for you.
We are NOT the best messangers - 76% of givers are motivated by friends and family, says Cone.
sixdegrees.org
networkforgood.org from which you can give to any charity in the country from one place - what about libraries?
Forget the mission megaphone - start to listen.

Now! User-generated content! YAY! AND, she just said web1.0 = destination based strategy; they come to us. They expect it to come to them. Passionate online communities for everything: Medieval Pottery Research Group.

Celebrity-obsessed - Perez Hilton gets 5 million readers a day. Kevin Bacon called her to ask what his salad dressing was (Paul Newman). He has a google alert set up for his name. We all should have this AND for our organizations. His is all Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. He realized that’s his salad dressing. He bought sixdegrees.org and asked them to help him do something with it. It’s where you can go upload your photo and text about what you want to say - they generate some code that displays a badge or widget and you can establish an association with a charity. It updates and tracks how many donations you’ve raised. The top ten fundraisers beat any celebrity but harnessing their SOCIAL NETWORKS.

1. Focus on audience values, not your own.
2. Choose the right messenger.
3. What attracts is celebs; what motivates is personal.
4. Contests are good.
5. Uber-activists are more than ATMs.
6. Give them the tools to fundraise WHERE THEY ARE ONLINE.
7. Social networks are complex.
8. [look in the slides.]

Why me? Why now? What for?

Tags: conference, katya andresen, keynote, liveblog, marketing, new hampshire, nh, nh center for nonprofits, nhnonprofits, non-profits, technology

This entry was posted on Monday, June 11th, 2007 at 2:48 pm and is filed under Libraries, Services, and Librarians. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.