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Social Change and the Connected Age

Connectedness does not come from technology but is facilitated and strengthened by it. The greatest challenge for nonprofit organizations and their leaders in the connected age is recognizing that using social-media tools is easy compared with adopting a new mindset for social change. Today, nonprofit groups are part of a larger network or ecosystem of people, organizations, resources, and information. Relying on old-fashioned, top-down management approaches for setting activist agendas and designing fund-raising and volunteering efforts will lead inevitably to disappointing results. Power is shifting from institutions to individuals throughout society. We have seen what happens when people can barter and sell goods without a middleperson on eBay, and when we can watch what we want, when we want, through YouTube. The same sorts of shifts are happening quietly in the nonprofit world. Anyone can create and post a video of what they think their Congressional representatives do all day as part of the "Congress in :30 Secs" campaign organized by the Sunlight Foundation. Volunteers can document the connections between campaign contributions and legislation as part of the Genocide Intervention Network. Donors can pick a school and a specific project to support as part of the DonorsChoose Web site. Successful connected-age organizations are those that facilitate broadly representative networks of social activists — not necessarily organizations with the biggest membership lists or the most money in their coffers. These days, young people, in particular, are not likely to join behemoth membership organizations. Instead, they go online to express their views and instantly connect with individuals and communities interested in their issues and concerns. They also self-organize for social action as so many did in joining the immigration marches last spring.

Through a full day of presentations, interviews, gallery tours, author talks, and more, this program considers the place of Shepard Fairey's work in a powerful design history of civic empowerment and resistance, seeks to understand how images resonate and gain momentum, examines the latest trends in communication and messaging, and discusses the implicit challenges of social agency in design.

Four roles for social media in local government communications

HOW TO: Manage Multiple Social Media Profiles

Conventional wisdom says that scaling social innovation starts with strengthening internal management capabilities. This study of 12 high-impact nonprofits,however, shows that real social change happens when organizations go outside their own walls and find creative ways to enlist the help of others.

Brand Building + Social Media = Zappos Example and Employee Advocacy

every year a culture book including testimonials of employees about how it is to work at Zappos.

Zappos tends more on spending money on employees than on media planning.

$1,000 grants have proven they can change the lives of low-income individuals of potential in the Twin Cities. With 60 million living below the poverty line in the United States, and 400,000 low-income in the Twin Cities alone, the MicroLoan/Grant concept can help individuals and families of potential move out of poverty to a middle and upper-middle class standard. A significant percent of those 400,000 low-income in the Twin Cities are energetic people of potential. With a boost up of $1,000 or more with some mentoring from our volunteers, they would be able to change their lives dramatically.

One of the things that always fascinated me with virtual worlds and social networks was how many users regard their online contacts as 'friends' in every sense of the word...with the exception that they've often never actually met.

"We may be differently occupied, but we're hanging out together, each doing our own thing. Nobody would be throwing up their hands in horror if we were all reading our books or staring into space having our own thoughts."

We're a herdlike species, more likely to be obese if our peers are.

Cialdini says brain imaging shows that when we think we're out of step with our peers, the part of our brain that registers pain shifts into overdrive. "It's an incredibly powerful spur to action,

Obama's push to weatherize millions of homes — another stimulus bonanza — will require new norms. In Oregon, a countywide program to upgrade windows and insulation at almost no cost to homeowners got a tepid response. But after an intense mobilization campaign — through citizen councils, churches and Girl Scouts who went door-to-door asking residents why they hadn't weatherized yet — 85% of the county enrolled. "What worked was creating a sense that we're all in this together and you're a social deviant if you don't join us,"