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Social Media Introduction at #gmn09
"Question from GMN board meeting," Adin Miller tweeted on the Sunday afternoon before the GMN conference, “How can GMN volunteers and members use Twitter to improve and better the organization's efforts?”
A panel of social media professionals answered this question and discussed many others during the Monday session titled, “Social Media Tools: Why Grantmakers and Nonprofits Should Consider Them.” Matt Saunders of pingVision introduced his fellow panel members, Brian Pagels and Kurt Voelker, by name, e-mail and twitter username (@username is a shorter way of directing twitter users to a person's twitter updates at twitter.com/username). The three panelists all believe that grants managers and grantmaking organizations should consider online networking as part of their communications and outreach strategy.
A pre-session survey found that many attendees had little or no knowledge of social media, so the session was largely an introduction. Matt Saunders' (@creech) presentation to was largely an overview of what social media services are currently available, and the pros and cons of each.
During the session, the panelists added the phrases #gmn09 and #grantsm to any of their tweets related to the session and the conference. This convention, known as hashtags, provides an easy way to search tweets for relevant content.
“Collaboration is what you do everyday. We've have always had a social network,” Saunders said. For example, a grants manager’s network includes applicants, other foundations, and knowledge experts. “Web 2.0 has allowed us to extend this network beyond our normal close knit groups and increased our potential network to extend world-wide.”
While Twitter was a large part of the conversation, Saunders also touched on Facebook, LinkedIn, and a variety of applications that could make these services more centralized and user-friendly (e.g., TweetDeck, ping.fm, and FriendFeed) and more integrated with existing websites.
There were a few examples about how individuals and grantmaking organizations were using social media to help increase awareness of their missions and the nonprofits they serve, as well for the purpose of fundraising. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation keeps a Twitter page (@rwjf), as does The Nature Conservancy (@nature_org), which lists updates from their websites and around the web on related topics.
But what about impact? The panelists directed the audience to Beth Kanter, a nonprofit and social media consultant. Kanter's blog (beth.typepad.com, also @kanter) has an in depth discussion on her presentation about gauging metrics and effectiveness at this year's South by Southwest Interactive Conference. Kanter had great success in raising money quickly for educational grants through social media. Saunders' caveat: “This is still a growing field. Right now, it's a leap of faith.”
One example of impact not measured by page views is the Knight Foundation's News Challenge Garage (http://garage.newschallenge.org/), which brought nontraditional grant applicants together with online mentors to help refine their proposals for the Foundation.
The more tech savvy among the participants commented how GMN is currently working with social media during the session. “GMN has a website in Second Life already,” said Kyle Reis (@zazoomzimminy) referring to GMN's location in the online virtual world. A Twitter account named @CastleFndtn said, “Hey it works. So glad to learn about hash tags! Thanks!”
Before the session, April Montgomery from the Telluride Foundation confessed that she did not have a firm idea what the term social media meant. Afterwards, she said, “I understand what social media is now, but I wish there was a more specific, in-depth example of how a foundation could put these things to use.”
Several people agreed that they had learned a lot but were still unsure how they could introduce it to their organizations. “What is the use of Twitter if not for fundraising?” Sue Fulton from The Endowment for Health asked after the session. Other grants managers brainstormed that a potential use of Twitter would be to promote the work of their organization’s grantees.