Last week, I had the opportunity facilitate a "Social Media Strategy Map" workshop for over 100 Bay Area nonprofits. The workshop was hosted by Compasspoint, with support from the Lucile and David Packard Foundation.  

I don't get an opportunity to do this workshop with a large group, so this was fabulous learning experience to work out some techniques to make it scale.   And they worked!    I wanted to capture a couple of reflections on the process as well as content learnings by way of this post.

Ant Trails As Learning Opportunities

One of the things that is essential to good instruction (or presentation) is knowing your audience.   Every time I present or facilitate a workshop, I review the web sites and social media ant trails (social media properties) of participants.  

This takes a lot of time because I'm not just browsing, but I'm doing a pattern analysis for best practices that I can incorporate into a presentation about social media principles and nonprofits.   I think people are more likely to pay attention if they know that they might in the presentation.  Also, it allows for a more interactive discussion because participants can share their knowledge.  It's a shift from sage on the stage instruction to honoring the learners for what they know.

A couple things I discovered by following participants' ant trails:

• The Bay Versus the Bay: This was an excellent example of how social media strategy can support behavior change or action.   Some really good design points.  For example, note their call to action right on the YouTube video.  They were able to share some insights about how they track the success of this effort.

• ACLU-Northern California:  They are recruiting for a social media intern on Facebook. They used "tagging" on Facebook to make people aware of the note.   The note itself is an excellent job description for a social media intern.   This prompted a thoughtful discussion about to effectively manage social media interns.

• The Valley Medical Foundation:   This organization provided an example of the personal versus organizational voice issue that social media often brings up.  They shared how they worked through this internally.

Robot Voice Disguiser for Large Group Facilitation

I was lucky enough to be working with good folks at Compasspoint (Nelson Layag, Sue Bennett, and Sierra Catcott) who are experienced facilitators and workshop leaders.  They brought along their chimes which are a great tool for getting people's attention when they are working in pairs or small groups.   My son lent me his Robot Voice Disguiser which was good for an opening laugh, but the chimes were preferable.   It makes me wonder about the various techniques for getting people to shift attention from small group to large group.

Photo by Nelson Layag

Social Engineering the Small Groups

I've done this game enough times to know that one key to success is making sure the small groups have people with knowledge of communications plans, hands-on experience with the tools, someone who can facilitate the discussion, and people with hands-on experience using the tools.   I've used a couple of techniques to accomplish this and they worked.

Using a google form,  I sent a pre-survey that asked detailed questions about social media experience, communications planning, budget size, and job role.  On the name tags, we indicated people with social media experience with a "T" and those with communications planning experience a "C."    We made sure that these folks were not all seated at the same table - having them spread their experience through the room so there was a C and T at each table.

I also created a stand up, sit down exercise.   One part included having people stand if they had a formal or informal communications plan/strategy (half the room) -and then had them sit down in waves to determine formal communications, Internet strategy, and social strategy.  There were only a handful of people who had a formal communications plan with a social media strategy. 

Next, to ensure that all the people who very comfortable with social media aren't seated at the same table, we did the spectra gram.  I learned this technique from Allen Gunn who uses it during Penguin Day.  I have people line up from "very comfortable" to "not so comfortable" and facilitate a conversation.   Then, had them count off by table numbers.

Integrating Social Media Into Instruction

Over the past four years, I've been incorporating the use of social media as an instructional aid for workshops and presentations.  (See the interview I did for Arrive Magazine, pages 34-37).  Some techniques I'm using for workshops that have become standard for me:

• Wikitation:  A wikitation  (word coined by Allan Levine, Cogdog Blog) is a wiki that you use to share you presentation slides and links.  I used the wiki to take notes and add resources on the fly that come up during Q/A.   The wiki becomes an electronic flip chart and resource collector.   What's nice is that allows you save paper and be a little bit green, although you do need a couple of key paper handouts (instructions/cards).   The wikitation for this workshop is here.
• What's the Hash Tag?  With more and more people tweeting, I announce at the beginning what the hashtag is and encourage workshop tweeting.  I've be using a tool called "What the Hash Tag"  that easily aggregates tweets into a transcript.  Monitoring the tag stream during the workshop provides a backchannel for people in the room and allows for remote participation.

Revising the Cards/Game Aspect

As my own learning and thinking about social media and nonprofits has evolved, so have the principles and strategies.  This has had an impact on the design of the cards, game instructions, etc.  I spent a lot of time last week tweaking the point system on the tool cards to guide better strategy decisions.  It worked, but the strategy framework itself needs to be rethought.  

The first iteration of the strategy cards consisted only of online approaches and was scaled based on amount of time (listening, participate, share story, generate buzz, and online community building).  The tools aligned to the components.   I've evolved this to engage/listen, social content, spreading buzz, movement building, and offline impact and more fluidity in choice of tools, also adding new ones.  A concept framework for strategy could be tweaked further and I have some ideas.

We had enough time so we could use the "life happens" cards where groups lose or win points based on a real life situation.  You know, resistance, staff turnover, lack of resources, etc.   The groups were thrilled to win points.  So, it is making me think that I need to revise the "life happens" to win points if they solve the problem in their strategy.

Report Out Technique

With such a large group, I thought ten reports using the same scenario would be deadly boring.  So, we had three scenarios and 3-4 tables working on each scenario.  I did the reports out for each scenario which worked really well.   People really got into the making up the context part.  For example, one of the organizations all of sudden had a famous rap star alumni who made YouTube videos for the organization's campaign.

I asked each to report out and I listened for three things: 

• What was a best practice or innovative idea and acknowledge it?
• Ask a strategy question about something that was missing? 
• What specific how to resource would be useful to know about?
• Is there a tactical tip to share?

We ended with a reflection about what they will take back to the organizations and, of course, I brought along some extra books I've been sent to do a big social media book giveaway (shared myself some postage costs!)

All in all - I can say that I learned a lot and hope participants did too!

Source: Nonprofit Next Report form David LaPiana

Last week we invited people to help us crowd source a Hollywood Ending for the WeAreMedia Wiki.  We've spent the last 18 months focused on how social media can support communications and fundraising strategies and now it is time to turn attention to program delivery and other issues.  

We wanted to get into the weeds and asked for thoughts and examples of nonprofits using social media for program delivery in these areas:

• Volunteer or board recruitment strategy
• Ooutreach or educational program delivery
• Crowdsourcing ideas for program development
• Professional development
• Integrated in other areas

And you responded with your thoughts!    But I wondered, is there a larger frame?  

Kismet! 

David La Piana released a report last week on the "Next Nonprofit" Blog taking a look at how five key trends are helping shape a new social sector.   The trends are:

•     Demographic Shifts Redefine Participation
•     Technological Advances Abound
•     Networks Enable Work to Be Organized in New Ways
•     Interest  in Civic Engagement and Volunteerism Is Rising
•     Sector Boundaries Are

This exploration of the five key trends yielded important learnings: While each dynamic has profound implications for how nonprofits will do business in the future, it is their interplay that will transform the sector.

The Chronicle has a summary of the report here.

The insight that resonated most was a paragraph in the summary about the importance of rapid experimentation and learning is to the future of nonprofits.  I just have to quote it:

For the nonprofit sector to survive and thrive, everyone — nonprofits, funders and capacity builders
alike — must become futurists. This does not mean predicting the future (an impossible task if ever there was one) but instead means being attuned to rapid and continual shifts in the environment; continually evaluating and interpreting how organizations can best adapt; and experimenting with new responses and approaches. Being a futurist requires both individual and institutional curiosity, and a willingness to take risks. No one of us can afford to rest on our laurels, assuming that the old ways of doing business will continue to serve us in this dramatically new and ever-changing environment. Nor can we rely on external experts, scholars or think tanks to map the road ahead for us — it is our responsibility to envision and shape the future for ourselves, our organizations and our society.  

The section about technology and social media describes a few key projects and trends. Technology, which is a significant driver of change, also affords powerful tools for collective thinking and
action to position the sector to be proactive — not reactive — regarding the trends outlined in the report.  What I found most thought provoking were the questions we should ask about technology in charting the future.  

One, in particular, very relevant to question we're asking right now as part of the WeAreMedia project:

•     What  if the sector employed social media tools to engage both professionals and volunteers in    designing new approaches to service or program delivery?

Have some thoughts?  Add them to the WeAreMedia wiki here.