Nonprofit Social Media

Vote for me and save pets' lives When you donate and vote, you'll help me, you'll help the person who cares for me, and you'll help my charity get more pets spayed or neutered! Every $1 donation you make goes directly to spaying and neutering pets - and gives ME another vote in this contest.

(Lil) Green Patch enables Facebook users to send plants to one another, and sponsors contribute money to save one square foot of rainforest in Costa Rica for every ten patches given.

Tyson Foods donated 100 pounds of food for every comment left in response to its blog posts about hunger.

It works like this: users are given one question and four different answer choices. For every correct answer, sponsors (who advertise at the bottom of every page) donate 20 grains of rice to feed the world's hungry through the World Food Program. With very little promotion on the part of the WFP, the game has gone viral - it has about 40,000 users a day and so far can be credited with purchasing enough rice to feed 2.5 million people for a day - in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Uganda, Cambodia, Bhutan and Nepal.

In the third entry to our six part series, Innovative Giving, we feature Beth Kanter: a social media consultant who used Twitter to raise over $2500 in just 90 minutes.

The Indianapolis Museum of Art has done an amazing job of integrating a social media strategy into its communications strategy. What makes them a success? Whether it is managing their Facebook presence or encouraging conversation on their blog with art lovers, their social media strategy is a team effort. While they have put someone in charge, their social media strategy is everywhere - from the conservation department to the curators.

During my time in Sydney, I spent a day with meeting with the staff at the Powerhouse Museum and Seb Chan who writes the Museum's blog, Fresh + New(er) and who I have had many virtual conversations with via our blogs but have not met face-to-face. I got to meet the entire web team who I interviewed using QIK (see above), got a whirlwind tour of the museum (the Lost in Space Robot is in their collection!) and have an informal workshop with members of the marketing staff and curators. Seb Chan has a good write up here. The Powerhouse has done ground breaking in integrating social media into their communications and web strategies (most recently they've joined the Flickr Commons) but are also in the process of embracing the groundswell concept and making social media part of their organizational culture. The afternoon workshop was another opportunity for education and discussion about social media and the museum's mission as well as a great example of how you create social change behind the firewall. I also met and interviewed Dr. Lynda Kelly, Head of Research, Australian Museum who shared some of her recent research on museum participation and online social activities. She took excellent notes about our session and blogged it here.