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.

Social Media Leadership Award: Winner Announced!

The Jenzabar Foundation is pleased to announce the winner of the 2009 Social Media Leadership Award. After reviewing the submissions for all of the worthy finalists, the Foundation has selected FORGE to receive this year’s award and the $3,000 grant!

On behalf of the entire Foundation, we would like to congratulate FORGE, as well as the organization’s Founder and Executive Director, Kjerstin Erickson on receiving the award! See the below post for more information, or visit www.FORGEnow.org.

And once again, congratulations to all of the organizations that participated in the Social Media Leadership Award contest. All of your campaigns have displayed exemplary social media expertise, and the Foundation is truly inspired by all that you do, both on and offline. Thanks to the dedication that you have for your causes, the contest has been a smashing success, and the Foundation will continue to recognize the outstanding achievements of nonprofit organizations around the globe!

Selection Process Still Underway

Due to the quality of the submissions/campaigns that are currently under review, the Foundation is still in the process of selecting the winner of the Social Media Leadership Award. Thank you for your continued patience. The winner will be announced by this Friday.

Final Day to Post Your Comments!

All comments need to be submitted by 12:00 a.m. ET tonigt. We will list the finalists on the blog on Monday, May 11th. The winner will be announced on Wednesday, May 13th.

Again, The Foundation is incredibly impressed with the passion that all of you have to your organizations and causes! Your dedication to increasing awareness and support for your endeavors, evidenced by your use of innovative social media promotion techniques, has inspired many of your service-minded peers!

Epic Change

Stacey Monk

Founder and CEO

Epic Change

Stacey Monk elates how gaining a reputable web presence via social media has helped her raise over $70,000 from over 1000 donors. By raising those funds primarily using free tools and online P2P campaigns, they successfully have been able to loan over $65,000 to their pilot project to expand a locally-founded school in Arusha, Tanzania.

As the creators of one of the first successful Twitter fundraising campaigns, TweetsGiving, Epic Change has been broadly recognized for our use of social media in popular online publications from Mashable to CauseWired, and from VentureBeat to The Nonprofit Times.  Last November, with the TweetsGiving campaign, Epic Change drove over 15,000 visitors to the TweetsGiving site in just 48 hours, and raised over $11,000 in just 48 hours to fund a new classroom in Arusha, where the Twitter handles of campaign donors are now painted on the walls.  In early 2008, we also received an award from the Case Foundation for our successful participation in their America’s Giving Challenge competition.

In total, in just 18 months since its launch, Epic Change has effectively employed social media as a key strategy in raising over $70,000 from over 1000 donors – over 80% of whom have given $40 or less. By raising those funds primarily using free tools and online P2P campaigns, we have been able to loan over $65,000 so far on our pilot project to expand a locally-founded school in Arusha, Tanzania.  As a direct result of this investment, the student population has tripled and the school recently ranked #1 of 117 schools in Arusha on national exams.

As the founder of Epic Change, I’ll confess that our adoption of social media was in some ways accidental; these tools were a free way to reach a potential audience for our startup nonprofit quickly.  More importantly, though, as we believe “epic” stories of hope are valuable assets that people around the world may use to generate income to fund “change” in their communities, social media – from WordPress to Twitter to Facebook and beyond – present compelling opportunities to share such stories.  Our partner in Arusha blogs regularly, for instance, to provide stories, insights and updates from her unique perspective.

We’d very much like to expand our ability to provide content directly from the school and add technology and social media to the school’s curriculum.  To do so, we will be implementing a technology lab at their school, and the funds from this award would be directed toward that purpose.  Already, we have received a donation of 20 laptops, and, through a partnership with Sun Strides, solar power has been implemented at the site.  This $3,000 would help us make substantive progress toward getting the students, teachers and parents at the school online so they may personally share their own compelling stories – and directly participate in campaigns like TweetsGiving 2009 – as part of a global social media community.

FORGE

Kjerstin Erickson

Founder and Executive Director, FORGE

www.FORGEnow.org

Kjerstin Erickson, Founder and Executive Director of FORGE, discusses how her organization is using social media to their advantage, but is more interested in how new media technologies are providing the refugees they support with a platform to share their voice. 

As the Founder and Executive Director of FORGE, an international NGO that supports social entrepreneurship among impoverished refugee communities in Africa, I’ve been blogging for more than 2 years now. Rather than use my blog as a simple platform to promote FORGE’s work, I’ve tried to use my voice to discuss the issues and difficulties of the sector, the inspiration that gets us by, and the tough choices we face day-to-day. The approach has garnered FORGE and me significant attention, including being named “The Most Important Nonprofit Blog” by Tactical Philanthropy.

And yet, FORGE’s cause is not about me – it’s about the refugees who we serve. I’m sick of having to be the face of the organization simply because our constituents lack access to the electricity, cell phone networks, and internet connections that allow voices to be heard in this day and age. We want our donors and staff and supporters to hear about FORGE from the mouths of the only people who know the true quality of our work – the tens of thousands of African refugees that we’ve been serving for the past 5 years. And yet, as the web and social media become more and more pervasive, the voices of those without access to the fundamental tools are becoming more and more marginalized.

FORGE wants to change this. And through a new technology being pioneered to great success on the web, we think we’ve found a way.

FORGE wants to use the Social Media Leadership Award to allow refugees who’ve been affected by FORGE’s work to speak directly to the more than ten thousand people who visit our website each month. Using a brilliant new technology that enables video web spokespeople to guide a user through a website, FORGE’s refugee staff and program beneficiaries who otherwise lack access to internet and technology could find their voice and tell their stories across the world.

By allowing African refugees to be video spokespersons throughout our website, we would not only be pioneering an emerging new technology for social good, but we’d be exponentially enhancing the understanding and engagement between Western supporters and African beneficiaries. Connecting constituents, despite the physical distance separating them, will contribute to not just FORGE’s outreach and fundraising, but to taking social media to the next level – beyond the bounds of access and connectivity.

A bit more on FORGE:

Believing in the power of the world’s poor to best shape their futures, FORGE works with war-torn African communities to rebuild their lives, stabilize their market systems, and reconstruct the social and economic bonds that create the conditions for lasting peace and prosperity.

An official Operating Partner of the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), FORGE works hand-in-hand with refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Rwanda, Burundi and Sudan. Now in its sixth year of operation, FORGE has implemented over 60 community development projects that have served more than 60,000 refugees in the four sites in Southern Africa FORGE has worked: Meheba, Mwange, and Kala refugee camps in Zambia, and Dukwi refugee camp in Botswana. FORGE projects and programs are run by a staff of 150 refugees.

FORGE and Social Media:

FORGE’s staff are well-versed in a range of social media methods and forums. In addition the the rich multi-media functionality of our website, FORGE’s staff regularly use Twitter, Facebook, Causes and other forums to connect with supporters, partners, and the general public. FORGE Founder and Executive Director Kjerstin Erickson has been a regular blogger since 2007 on Social Edge, a program of the Skoll Foundation.  FORGE’s “Radical Transparency” efforts garnered widespread attention from social entrepreneurship experts, philanthropic consultants, nonprofit development staff, and national publications such as the Wall Street Journal and the San Francisco Chronicle.

www.FORGEnow.org

Theatre In The Park

Kathy Jones Knudsen

Development Director

Theatre In The Park

Kathy Knudsen discusses how her organization, Theatre In The Park, is using social media to foster conversations that center on suggestions for future performances, as well as utilizing these channels to identify new opportunities for fundraising.

Theatre In The Park uses, and will expand their usage, of social media in the following ways: first, it is already used to bring fresh ideas into the theatre in decisions for future performances; it is also used to get younger audiences involved with up-coming performances; volunteering; usage of the fan page; and, we send notification of events through this media form. Social media is a quick and easy way to connect.  An example of using Face Book, we recently sent notification to our supporters about a fundraising event which turned out to be very successful.

Theatre In The Park is located in the northern end of Raleigh, North Carolina’s scenic Pullen Park and is internationally acclaimed for its outstanding theatrical achievements—more than 40,000 people attending our programming last year alone. Theatre In The Park is second only to the celebrated Louisville Actor’s Theatre in original works premiered— producing over 40 original plays during the last two decades (two of which moved to off-Broadway).

MyImpact.org

Chris Golden

Co-Founder, MyImpact.org

www.tinyurl.com/myimpact
Chris Golden details how MyImpact.org is helping service-minded students connect and raise awareness for their causes and organizations.

 

myImpact.org will be an online platform for young people involved in community and national service through which they can use social media to tell their stories, connect with others and gain support for their work. The mission of the organization is to use stories of service, told through metrics and multimedia, to inspire more young people to become involved and contribute to a growing movement of citizen-centered change. This message is consistent with the Call to Service delivered by President Obama in his Inaugural Address and affirmed by Congress in the recently passed Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act of 2009. 

The development of the myImpact.org web platform will integrate existing social media tools including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube and aggregate content on these platforms into a user’s myImpact page.  Here, an individual’s story of service can be used to raise awareness and/or funds for their project, organization or issue. myImpact.org will provide benefits to the individual volunteer while also being a critical outreach tool for the organizations or programs they work with. By partnering with national service organizations, myImpact.org will be a virtual roof under which all those involved in community and national service will gather to answer a simple question, “what is your impact?”  

Research indicates that one of the greatest obstacles in engaging young people in service is demonstrating that they can make a difference. By bringing the work and success of others alive online in a dynamic way, myImpact.org will help inspire and engage a generation of community-minded citizens. Visitors to the site who are currently uninvolved but looking to make their own impact will be able to browse service projects by various categories including issue, region and sponsoring organization. An important part of this mission is ensuring that the content within the site is available elsewhere to young people how, when and where they wish to be reached.  

The power of a story to make a difference, raise awareness and inspire change can never be underestimated. MyImpact.org answers a current need in the national service field by helping organization leverage social media so that they may comprehensively demonstrate the impact of the good work being done throughout the country. Although there already are platforms that allow volunteers to put pictures, videos and blog entries online, there does not exist a single online destination for the young person in service and their supporters.  

The time-honored tradition of national service is being renewed by the Millennial Generation, bolstered by the wake of the passage of the Serve America Act which, among other efforts, will triple the size of AmeriCorps over five years. MyImpact.org seeks to capitalize on this auspicious time, using the power of integrating social media through a comprehensive online platform to raise awareness about the movement as a whole, and allow participants and their organizations to use the platform to raise awareness of their own efforts on its behalf.  

myImpact.org is currently partnering with national service organizations including City Year, Youth Service America, the Corporation for National & Community Service, Mobilize.org, the National Conference on Citizenship and ServiceNation. Since its conception, myImpact.org utilize social media (primarily Facebook and Twitter) to gather support and spread its message. In multiple scenarios, this allowed us to connect with partners and funders. Being the recipient of the Jenzabar Foundation Social Media Leadership Award will allow myImpact.org to continue partnership-building and outreach to gain support for the development of its platform.  

The following testimonials represent the power that myImpact.org could have:

Organization:  

“I think myImpact.org could make a big difference to City Year. One of the founding principles of City Year is based on the idea that big change can start with a single individual, a single action. True inspiration can be found in the everyday stories that we hear from our corps members. The ability for corps members to share their stories could send “ripples of hope” not only to young people interested in serving with City Year, but young people, far and wide that are looking to make a difference in their communities.

With the current hardships and economic crisis people are facing today, I think people are looking for hope, to be inspired. City Year and other service organizations like the Peace Corps and Teach for America, offer these types of opportunities through service and myImpact could bring greater awareness of these organizations. More specifically, an application that would allow City Year corps members to track their service on their “profile page” through pertinent civic engagement metrics and hours served could add tremendous value to the program.

Additionally, a “stories of service” blog from myImpact.org, with social media tools (RSS, sharing, comments) and applications (YouTube, Flickr) could potentially be integrated into cityyear.org, keeping content fresh, engaging, and relevant.”  

~ Michael Messina – Online Marketing Manager, City Year  

Volunteer:  

 “After graduating from high school, I participated in an AmeriCorps program called City Year. City Year provides an opportunity for young adults ages 17-24 to devote a year to community service. I served in Seattle with 50 other corps members who came from all over the country. Everyone was eager to explore the city and meet other idealistic young adults, but we quickly realized how hard it was to meet people beyond the limited corps size.

With an online networking tool such as myImpact, my friends and I could have met other peers participating in national service programs in Seattle. I also would have loved to have myImpact.org as a place to record my service experience. I wrote a few entries in a word document, but that quickly ended.

With myImpact.org, I could have written about my service not only for myself to look back on later but also to share with others. Two years removed from my AmeriCorps experience, I regret not having journaled more. I would have enthusiastically used myImpact.org to share notes with other young adults participating in national service programs!”

~ Catherine Wright – AmeriCorps Alumnus (’07) 

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/