The Foundation’s John Beahm Discusses Support for Student Humanitarian Work

John Beahm, the executive director of The Jenzabar Foundation, talks with The Foundation Center about Jenzabar’s support of education that also promotes a community of students getting involved with humanitarian services. Mr. Beahm shares information about how The Jenzabar Foundation has been successful at helping student leaders in higher education successfully carry out humanitarian efforts for the improvement of our world. Take a listen to Mr. Beahm’s discussion on The Jenzabar Foundation.

The Foundation Center is a national nonprofit service organization, recognized as the nation’s leading authority on organized philanthropy.

North Carolina Theatre

Kristin Buie

Communications Manager

North Carolina Theatre

www.nctheatre.com

Kristin Buie explains how North Carolina Theatre is leveraging several online strategies to engage the public in attending their productions and learning more about their organization’s educational department.

North Carolina Theatre

North Carolina Theatre is a premiere, non-profit, professional, regional theatre located in downtown Raleigh producing memorable Broadway revivals that blend the best talent in New York with regional performers. Founded in 1984, North Carolina Theatre has been operating for 26 seasons and has greatly contributed to Raleigh’s growing arts culture. North Carolina Theatre also has a dynamic education department providing exceptional performing arts training, performance and outreach opportunities for youth in the Raleigh community.

In the past year North Carolina Theatre has invested heavily in our internet marketing and social media strategies. While our primary goal is to drive the public to our website (and sell tickets), we have built in additional web strategies that we feel keep us relevant in the world of musical theatre and the world wide web.

E-Newsletter Stage Notes: In January 2005, North Carolina Theatre switched from a printed newsletter to our e-newsletter Stage Notes. With a database of over 30,000 names and emails, this is a great tool for sharing behind-the-scenes information to our patrons. Stage Notes is a monthly e-newsletter where we share ticket discounts, upcoming shows, special events, giving opportunities and other information pertaining to the theatre and our education department. When you visit our website and click on the Stage Notes tab, you are able to sign up to instantly receive our updates!

Blog: We started our blog in June 2008. For the past ten months we have written nearly 50 posts and have recently made it a priority to blog at least once a week. Most of our posts revolve around a show or event, and give our patrons and the general public a behind-the-scenes look at the process of producing a professional show. Our blog serves as a forum where we can post pictures, video, link to reviews, audition information, etc. We invite anyone to subscribe to our blog by the RSS feed on the left hand side, and encourage everyone to leave a comment on our blog – we always want the conversation to be continued there!

Facebook: North Carolina Theatre originally had a traditional Facebook profile, but recently transitioned to the business page, where anyone on Facebook can become a “fan” of  North Carolina Theatre. On our page, we have uploaded an application where all of our blog posts are fed onto our Facebook page. We also post production photos on Facebook, as well as create events to invite people to our shows. We view Facebook as an audience development tool, one that not only reaches out to the younger generation of musical theatre goers, but exposes a wider audience to all that we are doing in the community.

Twitter: North Carolina Theatre (nctheatre) joined Twitter in February 2009 and is relatively new to the world of tweeting in 140 characters or less. This is another way to reach new audiences, and since then, we have 167 ‘followers’ and the number is growing each day. We use Twitter to share ticket discounts, behind-the-scenes information about the show, cast interviews on local TV and radio stations, etc. This is another way to connect with a new group of people and we are able to hear their feedback and comments in another form of technology.

YouTube: We have a YouTube channel where we have posted various videos to give the audience a taste of what they get if they come see our show. Due to rules and regulations set by Actors’ Equity Association we are limited in what we can post, but with the actors’ permission we are able to get short snippets of them singing and promote the show in this format. We recently took the camera back stage to visit the wig & makeup department, shot footage of the orchestra rehearsing during sitz probe and got some footage of our Miss Saigon stars in action during local press interviews. We are continually trying to expand on our video capabilities and feel that this is an important tool. People are able to subscribe to our YouTube channel, so anytime we upload a new video, they are alerted and can see it without having to search for us every time!

Podcast: We have the opportunity to podcast with a local public relations and marketing firm, MMI Associates, Inc. to help promote each show. The podcast serves as an interview where they ask us questions about the content of the show, cast, ticket information and pricing. Each podcast is distributed directly to 12 different local media outlets and posted on 11 different websites. In the future, we will begin posting our podcasts on our blog and website to further promote our individual podcasts.

Disney High School Musical 2 Viral Commercial: To help generate online buzz around our upcoming show Disney High School Musical 2, North Carolina Theatre is going to host a viral commercial contest. We will advertise this via our website, blog, Facebook, Twitter and e-blast it to local colleges and high school students. They will be charged with creating a :30 TV commercial for the web to promote the show. The entries will be narrowed down to five finalists, and people will visit our blog to vote and post comments about their favorite contestant. The winner will be announced at Target Student Preview Night on June 12^th, an outreach program we have that offers discounted tickets for students and teachers, and will have their viral commercial streaming on the NC Theatre website, YouTube channel, e-blast, etc. with the chance to produce future NC Theatre commercials.

We feel that we have been successful in building a new social media audience and feel that this is an important aspect of our marketing. One of many success stories is a patron who bought ten tickets to Miss Saigon, and when asked how he heard about the show, he responded, “I saw the videos on YouTube.” Another success story deals with Facebook and North Carolina Theatre’s Student Preview Night program, which has grown by leaps and bounds. Prior to Dreamgirls in January 2008, our Target Student Preview Night audience numbers were around 600-800 per show. After we formed our Facebook page, and began promoting Target Student Preview Night and our other programs on our page, we saw a large increase in our Student Preview Night numbers. Beginning with Dreamgirls our audience numbers were 1,500+ and have remained steady ever since. All of the above services are free and we believe that they are working to help further our mission, which is to strengthen the cultural vitality of the region and cultivate musical theatre appreciation by producing outstanding professional Broadway musicals and developing the next generation of artists through youth training, performance and outreach programs.

Habitat for Hamtramck: Rebuilding Homes to Foster Positive Redevelopment

Ian Perrotta

Director

Habitat for Hamtramck

www.habitatforhamtramck.org

Ian Perrotta of Habitat for Hamtramck explains how his grassroots organization, armed with the goal of rehabilitating houses in the Hamtramck area of Detroit for families that support the positive redevelopment of the area, is focused solely on promoting their cause the internet’s “main roads.”

Hello. My name is Ian Perrotta and I am the director of a new non-profit organization. Habitat for Hamtramck is a grassroots organization with the goal of rehabilitating houses in the Hamtramck area of Detroit and giving them to families that can help further the positive redevelopment of the area.

This is actually the first week the website has been fully operational and able to accept donations, so currently my brother and I are involved in a media blitz involving all of the new web giants. I recently came to the realization when posting fliers for my lost cat that getting attention to help find her would be a lot like hyping something up on the internet. Only, instead of placing fliers on telephone posts next to stop signs on main roads where people can see them, on the internet you can apply the same logic and place fliers on all of the internet “main roads.”

For Habitat for Hamtramck, we went straight to the highways by writing an I-Report on  CNN.com, creating Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, YouTube, Digg, and Flickr accounts, and posting on popular sites such as PerezHilton and TMZ, and now we’re on the side streets trolling for groups that look like they would have people who would help spread the word virally. By successfully integrating social media applications into our organization we have generously increased the awareness of our non-profit. Ultimately, our goal is to enrich the lives and and community of Hamtramck and after reading about The Jenzabar Foundation’s Social Media Award, we feel that this is exactly the kind of morale booster that our organization needs in order to give back.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center

Amanda McCormick

http://filmlinc.com/blog

Amanda McCormick of The Film Society of Lincoln Center explains how the idea to invite students to cover their New Directors/New Films festival for the filmlinc blog (http://filmlinc.com/blog) helped to inspire the public to see the festival with new eyes and perspectives.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center: giving “new voices” a home on our blog

What happens when you are able to give your audience a voice and an ability to play an active role in your mission as a nonprofit? In the case of The Film Society of Lincoln Center “New Voices” initiative, I think the results are inspiring.

A little background on our institution: we were founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international cinema, to recognize and support new filmmakers, and to enhance awareness, accessibility and understanding of the art among a broad and diverse film going audience.

Like any nonprofit organization, we are sometimes resource-challenged, and don’t boast the most state-of-the-art technology. Yet within the emergence of social media, I think we could see fantastic potential for grass roots empowerment of our very passionate and engaged audience. Using existing social media platforms like a Facebook fan page or a WordPress blog, we can not only begin a conversation with the public we serve but also hopefully harness their passion and affinity to help reinvigorate the basic mission of our organization and ultimately grow our constituent audience.

I am a huge believer in the power of social media to affect social change and general engagement with the mission of nonprofits, and during our New Directors/New Films festival, I wanted to raise our own bar on its use to reach new audiences. So with the “New Voices” campaign, I aimed to recruit young people (many of them college students) to help cover our New Directors/New Films festival for the filmlinc blog (http://filmlinc.com/blog) and also help inspire the public to see the festival with new eyes. My requirements were simple: I was looking for engaged, thoughtful and passionate people with diverse points of view. The response I received from motivated young people was huge and inspiring. After they qualified by completing a short writing assignment, I gave these “new voices” the ability to upload their posts to the filmlinc blog. I reviewed the posts and then published them to the web.

The posts came in fast and furious during the festival, and a surprising thing happened. You can promote your mission all day long, but somehow there’s just nothing like seeing new talent engage with what you’re trying to do and express your mission via their own point of view. With the 20 or so people involved with this volunteer initiative, we received thoughtful written pieces, analysis, interviews, photographs and video diaries—far more than I ever dreamed when I thought up the idea of giving our audience a voice through social media. These achievements are especially extraordinary, I think, when you consider we spent almost no money putting together the New Voices campaign besides the $20 or so dollars I spent on refreshments for the orientation meeting.

Our foray into social media has had measurable effects in the form of increased overall traffic to our gateway site (http://filmlinc.com), a host of new relationships with other institutions, and a whole portfolio of options that help us get news and information straight to our constituent audience. But I think the most exciting results we’ve received are the intangibles.

The power of social media to grow an institution lives in seeing a trio of college students inventively bringing our institution to life through a video diary in which they travel to the festival and interview experts for context.

The power of social media to reinvigorate the image of an institution lives in discovering talented young writers who see fresh details in a venerable institution.

The power of social media to help institutions move into the future lives in a versatile and collaborative set of tools that allow an unprecedented conversation to happen between institutions and the public they serve.

With a grant from the Jenzabar Foundation, I would certainly want to channel some resources back into cultivating and encouraging young people to contribute their talents and points of view to our mission.

To read more on the New Voices campaign, please visit our blog: http://filmlinc.wordpress.com/category/new-voices/

The Stolen Chair Theatre Company

Jon Stancato
Co-Artistic Director, The Stolen Chair Theatre Company
http://www.stolenchair.org

Jon Stancato is the co-artistic director of The Stolen Chair Theatre Company, a non-profit theatre collaborative based in New York.  Below, Jon outlines how the organization is utilizing social media to further build it’s audience and community of supporters and donors.

Connecting Audiences, Building Community, and Sustaining Art

New York’s Stolen Chair Theatre Company is a critically-acclaimed award-winning  non-profit collaborative theatre lab, now in its 7th season, dedicated to the theft, recycling, and reexamination of historical performance styles and to the creation of visually stunning and uniquely contemporary theatre where the earnest and the ironic happily co-exist. We have, since launching our first website in 2002, quite a few weeks before launching our first production, always understood the importance of leveraging the latest web technologies to enhance communication with our audience and community of supporters.  Casual supporters can browse our regularly updated website (which averages 3,000 visits per month and 4,000 visits when we have a show running), full of rich original content (like script excerpts, reviews, production photos, and reading lists), where they can sign up for our bi-weekly e-newsletters (we currently have over 3,500 subscribers) or make an online donation via Paypal.  For those who want go deeper, we use everything the Internet has to offer to give supporters the chance to virtually join us in rehearsal, peer into the minds of our creative team, get up to the minute updates, influence our project selection and development, and make a day-to-day impact on our fiscal operations.

• Blog: We started our blog in late 2006 and have nearly reached 200 posts, ranging from plugs of our latest shows, to fundraising appeals, from in-depth analyses of Stolen Chair’s rehearsal/development process, to exclusive interviews with some of New York’s most exciting theatre artists.  We make it easy for our supporters to subscribe to our RSS feeds and display our recent Twitter activity in a sidebar so we can complement our once-weekly blog postings with real-time activity.  We’ve just added an “Add This” link to each post so that interested readers can spread news about Stolen Chair via their favorite social networks
• Twitter: We’ve only just started tweeting away in early March but we couldn’t be more excited about how Twitter has empowered us to share the inner-workings of our collaborative with the outside world.  All seven of our company members tweet whenever they’ve had an administrative accomplishment (finishing a grant application, booking a Stolen Chair summer camp, etc), discovered something exciting in their research for an upcoming production, or read something related to our work.  We can share strategies with the other non-profits we follow and field questions from our followers about our organization and activities.
• Google Docs: When tweeting questions to our supporters gets too messy, we’ve used Google Forms to poll our audience.  Using these forms we capture vital statistics about the demographics that support our work and we receive valuable feedback about our productions.  With the support of The Field’s Economic Revitalization for Performing Artists grant (which receives funding from The Rockefeller Foundation’s Cultural Innovation Fund) Stolen Chair is currently developing a new membership organization of micro-producers inspired by Community Supported Agriculture, and we’ve used a survey hosted at Google Forms to solicit advice on this project (which we call the Community Supported Theatre or CST) from over 300 Stolen Chair fans. We currently use the online tools of Google Docs and Spreadsheets for our internal company collaboration, and as we develop our new CST project we will use these tools to solicit and open up collaboration with our CST members, such as crowd-sourcing the research for our next project.
• Picasa: Since 2007, we’ve hosted all of our production images, press photos, and rehearsal stills on Picasa so they can commented upon and shared more easily by our audience.  Browsing our Picasa public gallery (or on our website), our supporters can trace a production’s entire development through photos, from early creative retreats up until the last set piece has been struck.
• Facebook: Stolen Chair, like many organizations, is still trying to understand the new changes made to Facebook’s pages/groups, but we have long used our Facebook group to widen our organization’s reach and involve friends who may not have known about our work.  We post events and message our group’s fans.  The event invites make it easy for first-time collaborators to expose new audiences to our work.
• Craigslist: When we were unsure about what direction to take in designing our new logo and branding, we turned to crowd-sourcing via Craigslist.  We held a contest offering a free case of wine and season’s tickets to the graphic designer who could create the new look of Stolen Chair.  We received dozens of submissions and now have a new logo that fits us to a tee.
• Podcasts/YouTube: Stolen Chair participates in at least 3 podcasts a year (often through NYtheatrecast), giving supporters the opportunity to hear the voices of our creative team, often in dialogue with other New York theatre artists. In the coming year, we look forward to bringing our audience into the studio with us with weekly uploads of rehearsal highlights.  We’ll create trailers to build excitement for our newest productions and archive older works online, as well.
• Online Registry/Chipin: Though we receive donations from our supporters through Paypal, we plan on experimenting with two new fundraising options this fiscal year.  People will still be able to make general contributions to our season, but we will make it possible for interested donors to find out exactly where their money is going.  We will create an online “gift” registry where donors can sponsor a particular costume, set piece, advertisement for our new show, et al.  When we want to expand our budget beyond our initial projections, (like an increase in artist fees, an extra week of a production run, or an extra dozen lights) we plan to use the Chipin social networking program, integrated with Facebook and a widget on our blog/website, to generate small sums quickly and “socially.”  These two options will raise the stakes of our donor’s investment, giving Stolen Chair more solid fiscal support and giving supporters the satisfaction of seeing how much their contributions can affect the life of a small organization.

We use each of the above technologies as a tool to reach out to audiences in varying ways, knowing that potential audience members engage to different degrees in different kinds of ways — using all opportunities available, while being cognizant of the limits and potential of each technology, is a way to maximize contacts with an audience.  Each opportunity for contact will bring people closer to becoming a fully engaged audience member and perhaps becoming donor member.  Right now Stolen Chair’s donor base comprises about 1/5 of our audience base.  It is our hopes that by getting audiences involved with the company’s day-to-day activities through our extensive use of social media, more of our audience will be invested enough in the company’s success and give what they can to support it.  Even if our efforts to connect our audiences and build a deep community of Stolen Chair fans does not generate an increase in donations, they will most certainly increase the size of our audience base, boosting the box office revenue which supports our non-profit mission.

invisiblepeople.tv

Mark Horvath

InvisiblePeople.tv

Fifteen years ago I was a TV executive. Fourteen years ago I ended up homeless on Hollywood Blvd. I now am 14 years sober and am rebuilding my life but homelessness is once again a very real possibility. I lost my job in St Louis over a year ago. I took a job here in Los Angeles, moved here, and was laid off. I lost my house to foreclosure last week.

With $45, a small camera and a laptop I started http://invisiblepeople.tv, a homeless awareness vlog. I had to do something.

Every week I take a few minutes to get to know a different person without a home. I learn how they survive, how they came to find themselves homeless, and who they call friends. I ask them about their biggest wishes, their greatest hardships and their plans for the future.

Then, I introduce them to the world via social media. My video blog is a testament of the character and strength of people living on America’s streets. It gives them a voice and a chance to tell their story and become more than a coat sleeping on a park bench.

To get the word out about my vblog, I began using twitter, @hardlynormal and have more than 6,500 posts about the cause. I use it as my primary strategy of outreach, and as of April 2, I have 1,660 followers. I use it to connect to volunteers, to figure out where to buy raincoats, to get support for homeless children, to connect to resources and even to get traffic shortcuts.

I have been interviewed by John Lawlor on blogtalkradio.com, http://www.blogtalkradio.com/OnlineStrategist/2008/12/23/Mark-Horvath-SocialMedialogy-Conversations about my use of social media, and have a press release on http://pitch.pe/4732. I was also featured on a story about breaking social media rules; http://mashable.com/2009/03/10/breaking-social-media-rules/.

All of these social media tools are used in my efforts to raise the money needed to continue this important work. Right now I do not have the right equipment I need, and it is important to travel more because the homeless crisis is not isolated to Los Angeles.

UPDATE:

Currently I am in real crisis living without income trying to survive this economic nightmare. Thanks to the huge hearts of a few generous people I am making it day by day! But I am not asking for donations!

On invisiblepeople.tv you will not find a visible donation link. I simply want you to remember that the homeless people ignored today were much like the rest of us not very long ago.

Yesterday I saw a group of school kids making fun of an older chronic homeless man who was just trying to wave hello. If these kids took the time to hear his story or were exposed to the knowledge that homeless are real people I don’t think they would have acted so ignorantly.

Last night while stopped at a red light I watched people walk past a homeless person sleeping on the sidewalk. They would approach consciously ignoring the homeless person looking straight ahead. Each person as they got closer would glance down to the body and quickly look back up. No one stopped. No one paid any real attention. It could have even been a dead body or someone seriously injured. What I do know is that each person for one brief second when they looked at the homeless person felt something. But they did not act!

My hope is that when you meet the people on invisiblepeople.tv you won’t ignore your heart and you will take some kind of action to make our world better.

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” — Gandhi

Center for SCREEN-TIME Awareness

Robert Kesten
Executive Director
Center for SCREEN-TIME Awareness
www.screentime.org

Robert is the executive director of Center for SCREEN-TIME Awareness, a small international nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington, DC.  His organization is a leading nonprofit group that places an exclusive focus on the impact of electronic/screened media on health, education, family and the workplace.

Below, Robert outlines the social media campaigns that the Center is currently working on:

Campaign ONE:

In these very difficult economic times we, like many for and not for
profits are doing all we can to keep our doors open.  Many of those who
have supported us in the past are unable to contribute any longer, so we
have to find new sources of income and we have to become more astute in
the way we sell our educational materials.

We are using Twitter, Facebook, blogs and places like LinkedIn and Ecademy
to encourage people to visit our website and purchase our Organizer’s Kit
so that they can fully participate in our annual TURNOFF WEEK event,
coming up this April.

TURNOFF WEEK is a time (now in its 15th year) when people around the world turnoff their recreational use of screens for 7 days and live in the
present, in real time and space.  There are immediate medical and
educational benefits to this and our hope remains that people will become
more selective in how they use electronic media once they return to using
their myriad screens.

Our effort currently includes a constant flow of information on all these
various platforms, leading them to other platforms as well.  We plan to
put something up on Youtube as well in order to continue encouraging others to virally pass along the information.

To date, having started this plan last week, we have seen a spike on our
website and orders are picking up.  We are not yet at the level we need to
be at to achieve our goal, but there is a noticeable difference.  We are
exploring other sites, other tools and apps, as we go along, but as novices
in this field we are learning as we go.

We aim to master social media before TURNOFF WEEK begins (April 20-26) and use that knowledge to move forward with our message of building stronger families and communities.

Campaign TWO:

By using many of the same tools as above, we are launching a campaign to
challenge NBC Universal.  This large media company is using TURNOFF WEEK as a time to launch their Green TV week.  As we encourage people to
turnoff the recreational screen, and directly impact the environment, NBC
is encouraging people to watch an additional 150 hours of television,
increasing their carbon footprint.  NBC kicks off their GREEN TV
programming with the Miss USA pageant, hardly a paragon of environmental programming.

We are starting with a Twitter pitch, asking for retweets, and later this
week will form a Facebook community around this.  We will use our website,
with its increased traffic, to make people aware of NBC’s duplicity and we
hope to use NBC’s own media websites for our comments as a way to help
people focus on their real and only goal, to make money at the expense of
the environment.

I hope in the future we will be able to be more specific in how we will
use these wonderful new technological tools to get the word out, but as we
are learning, we can only express to you our goals, objectives and a basic
concept of how we hope to get there.

As a reminder, if you would like to support this initiative and it’s use of social media, please vote by leaving a comment under this post. At the end of the submission period, the campaigns with the most comments/votes will be  chosen as finalists.