Login with FacebookA Lesson from Obama’s Campaign
Obama's presidential campaign broke new ground with its inclusive and energetic social networking platform and its ability to mobilize an unprecedented portion of the population to action (and giving) on his behalf. His use of web 2.0 technologies reinvented the way political campaigns are run in this country, and considering how GreatNonprofits is applying web 2.0 to mobilize the nonprofit community, I am personally fascinated to see where we all go from here, and what happens during the NEXT election.
But for those of us in the nonprofit sector, there's a more immediate question: what can organizations learn from Obama's success with web 2.0, and how can we put it to use? Obama, for all of his manic fundraising, had plenty of money to implement his campaign initiatives. But if we're like most of the organizations in the country, with barely any marketing budget at all, never mind any money or personnel for social marketing, what can we take away from Obama's campaign that will help us in the scary new world of social networks, blogs, and wikis?
I think the most important lessons for nonprofits comes from Obama's operation at its most basic: he innovated. He took technology that had been around for a while and used it in a new way. He applied web 2.0 to a realm that had never met it before, and in so doing he changed the face of modern politics. What's scary about what Obama did is the risk he took- putting large amounts of resources into an untried strategy. But his success reminds us all that anything new, exciting, and ultimately worth it requires risk. Nonprofits have sat back and followed current trends for too long- in order to achieve the potential for influence that this sector needs in order to affect REAL change, to solve all of the problems that have created a need for our existence, we need to take these risks. Don't be afraid to innovate! Listen to every crazy idea that comes up, because it might just be the next break-through, and when was the last time a break-through came from the nonprofit sector? Perhaps if we take some risks and make some break-throughs, the world will sit up and take notice of the other work we're doing, and the public will elect us to create the change we know is necessary.
(For a great example of nonprofits using web 2.0 technology to reach more people, check out GreatNonprofits at http://www.greatnonprofits.org.)
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The Great*Guide - 2009 Bay Area Guide to Giving and Volunteering
It rolled off the presses and I got my first copy today. We then were doing a presentation at the Sobrato Center for SV2's grantees and showed them the Guide, and I had nonprofits coming up to me afterwards and asking how they could get into the Guide next year.
The Great*Guide is going to be available shortly online and in print. It'll be distributed through select retailers in the Bay Area and through the Nov 12th issue of the San Francisco Chronicle to select neighborhoods in the Bay Area. Look for it!
Perla
