Weblog strategies for nonprofits

One of the students in my weblogs class at Seybold last month was the web administrator of the Community Technology Foundation of California (zerodivide.org). They use a sophisticated CMS to maintain the site but are experimenting with weblogs and wanted to see whether they might be more easily customizable, because – we agreed – different communities and groups may have different user interface expectations and preferences. We talked at length till the break was over and since then we’ve had further discussions and I’ll likely be doing some pro bono consulting with them sometime soon.

This got me started thinking about how nonprofits and other nongovernmental, noncorporate organizations should be making use of weblogs, syndication, and the evolving dynamics of the blogosphere, as tracked by such invaluable second-generation services as Technorati.

Wanted: weblog strategy

By coincidence, I was surfing the Craigslist ads for writers and web developers recently (a great way of keeping tabs with job market trends) and saw a very interesting one from a nonprofit seeking a weblogs consultant to help them develop a program and execute it, addressing the question “How can weblogs promote social change?”

The interesting thing about the ad is that they demonstrated mastery of basic weblog concepts, saying

We already know that nonprofits can update their websites regularly using Movable Type. We already know that Blogger can be used to share information internally. We already know about K-Logs. We are interested in going further.

The nonprofit is CompuMentor. What they are looking for is what you might call a second-generation weblog strategy. They want to harness the power of the blogosphere.

My first though was, I need to discuss this with Phil Wolff. Fortunately, he lives nearby and we met for lunch near Lake Merritt one fine Oakland fall afternoon. He was full of suggestions. Assuming that CompuMentor helps people find work with their new computer skills, he said, “Why not give each trainee a blog. They can use it to track their training, their job search, their skill acquisition, and their accomplishments. When they find a job, they can use it to keep track of their achievements.” Phil reminded me how hard it can be to remember what you were doing six months ago without a log to remind you.

We started talking about resume blogging and related things, and I talked about how I thought CompuMentor was looking at the big picture. How about setting up a Technorati for nonprofits and other socially progressive organizations? How about doing some social ringleadering, pied-pipering, or whatever you call it? Definitely, yes, blog each organization externally and blog as many internally as can handle it.

For example, around this same time I was also talking to a friend who works for an environmental nonprofit here in the Bay Area that is dedicated to protecting the bay (OK, estuary). I asked her if their communications strategy had any room for weblogs, and started talking about some of the things you could do in-house or in collaboration with other entities. She averred that it sounded like something for a larger nonprofit, something on the scale of the Sierra Club, even though the 20 plus employees at her nonprofit make it a relatively large one compared to most.

I realized that unless someone kickstarts this and demonstrates the power of a nonhierarchical cellular communications network for publishing, syndication, sharing, commenting, there’s no way to demonstrate the network effects.

Empower as many people affiliated in whatever way with nonprofits to start blogs if they want to. Syndicate and reprint news, analysis, announcements, and alerts.

I did some searching on Google using simple terms such as “nonprofit weblog” and “nonprofit blog.” I didn’t find anyone directly working on the intersection of these two concepts. I did find a number of blogs mentioning nonprofits and possibly a few published by nonprofits. I also found lots of pages from techie nonprofits that mentioned weblogs in passing or published articles about them.

It occurred to me that any subculture or microcosm or market or realm of ideas needs its own pioneers with this medium. I think I’m going to try to convince CompuMentor to launch a pilot program that will plant that stake in the sand so that other nonprofits and ngo’s and progressive organizations can weave their own connections around it.

Dean campaign: A model for organizers

It also became clear to me that the Howard Dean campaign was demonstrating a very savvy understanding of weblogs, syndication, and social software. There are lessons for nonprofits from the Dean campaign and there is an opportunity to network with and through any active progressive campaigns.

Volunteers for Dean have developed an open-source community-weblog tool called DeanSpace (by adding some modifications to an underlying open-source weblog tool called Drupal). DeanSpace offers most of the usual weblog features and the ability for registered site users to sign up for their own blogs. It also has the built-in ability to post entries that come in from outside RSS feeds, which on the fundamental level enables DeanSpace sites to all republish (syndicate) each other’s content, either automatically or selectively. More broadly, it enables a DeanSpace site to include content from anywhere in the universe of RSS feeds, including – of course – RSS feeds from nonprofits.

There’s no reason why the nonprofit community could use a similar model and the most technologically savvy nonprofits most committed to networking and trying to build community online will probably adopt this method of sharing information and keeping a lively conversation of ideas bubbling from site to site.

The RSS-based syndication network has recently become the primary way for people to publish microcontent and communicate on the Web.

So, what steps can a nonprofit take to start engaging in this conversation?

The Foundation: Weblogs

Using a weblog with a nonprofit’s public facing site:

  • alerts
  • news
  • clips
  • human interest
  • personal voice
  • volunteers

Weblogs used internally as k-logs or project logs:

  • Trickier for smaller nonprofits unless it clearly saves work elsewhere (such as in email)
  • wiki alternative

Hosting blogs of associated people:

  • employees
  • volunteers
  • exec director (CEO)
  • board members
The Glue: Syndication
  • Even if blogs aren’t adopted for the public-facing site, add an RSS feed and promote it.
  • Include site updates, alerts, and any other news in that feed.
    all blogs emit RSS (later, maybe, Atom)
  • All email-based alerts duplicated as RSS feeds
  • RSS feeds registered centrally (?) or at local community switching stations, a la k-collector, etc.
  • Encourage other nonprofits to run your headlines on their websites
  • Enliven own website with headlines from other RSS feeds
  • Have at least one employee, intern, or volunteer start using an aggregrator in-house to track many related feeds, both news-filtered, and from weblogs and nonprofit sources)
  • Use trackback, commenting on other blogs, and reposting of each other’s keys stories as a way to strengthen your network and motivate larger groups when issues require attention.
  • Repost content from incoming RSS feeds when it amplifies your own message or provides needed context.

OK, so that’s all good but still generic. Each nonprofit is different. For example, I’m on the board of directors of a literary nonprofit called Watchword Press. As I was getting very excited about the possibilities in this area, I was talking to the publisher of Watchword and as I started regaling her with these ideas, I could hear her eyes glaze over (we were on the phone). It was that blog thing I’m always going on about… So these ideas won’t be relevant for everyone, at least not right away, but the general steps outlined above are worth investigating for any organization.

Promoting Social Change with Weblogs and Syndication

Here’s what I think CompuMentor should do. The interesting thing about the Bay Area is that there are quite a few nonprofits that try to make the benefits of technology available and accessible to ever-wider groups of people. This seems like the natural subcommunity of nonprofits in which to start evangelizing a more aggressive (“second generation”) use of weblogs.

CompuMentor straddles several of these key areas, in that its focus is on “behind-the-scenes technology assistance” that “benefits low-income and underserved populations” but it als offers the TechSoup website for nonprofits, which could serve as a bully pulpit from which to breach the gospel of blogging and syndication.

We’d like to think beyond the utility of a blog for sharing information. We’d like to understand how information can be aggregated and shared using a combination of organizational weblogs and other aggregation tools such as TrackBack, Blogdex, or the daily crawl. How can Mark Pilgrim’s “Who are the people in your neighborhood?” be used by nonprofits? By activists? What’s the most logical and effective way for these tools to be combined?

The steps required to do so include the following:

  1. Publish weblogs with RSS feeds at CompuMentor.org and TechSoup.org
  2. Provide personal blogs to employees and other affiliated people at the nonprofit, make sure RSS is enabled or at least optional.
  3. Run an internal k-log on CompuMentor’s intranet.
  4. Give weblogs to trainees and teach them to self-document.
  5. Establish new NonProfitCentral website:
    • With its own weblog and syndicated feed
    • Hosting weblogs for nonprofits and their associates
    • Republishing syndicated feeds for nonprofits by category
    • Hosting a Trackback or XMLRPC updates sites for nonprofit weblogs
    • Inviting any community to launch satellite weblog/host/syndication sites
    • Promoting the idea of online networking

I’ve also been meaning to talk to David Pollard about these ideas, because it seems like enabling progressive social organizations to network using weblogs, syndication, and other social software tools could be a key ingredient in saving the world.

(UPDATED October 8, 2003.)

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Comments

18 responses to “Weblog strategies for nonprofits”

  1. Olaf Brugman Avatar

    GREAT article!

  2. Conversations with Dina Avatar

    Blogs and mobs for social change

    [link via Mahesh ] The Indian Government is feeling the heat of technology.

  3. Funoodles Avatar

    Blogs and Social Change

    Ah, a post about social change blogging that mentions the Community Technology Foundation. I’ve been waiting to see how the social software and social justice movements will begin to intersect. His post is thoughtful and articulate, but the potential f…

  4. Jon Stahl's Journal Avatar

    weblog strategies for nonprofits

    Marty Kearns pointed me towards Weblog strategies for nonprofits @ Radio Free Blogistan which contains a number of thoughts on…

  5. The Happy Tutor Avatar

    Great post. Keep it up, please. I have been blogging about wealth, philanthropy, volunteerism, social capital and related topics for years. Very, very few people to link to. Most of the mavens are print only. Hard to find like minded people. Have added you to my blogroll, but really hope we can find more efficient ways to find one another.

  6. Dave Manelski Avatar

    I created and administer a Movable Type-based nonprofit website, Earth Share of Washington.
    http://www.esw.org/
    I think the reason that you can’t find any hits for nonprofit weblog is that because most nonprofits are optimizing their search results for their issues and not the tools they use to voice these issues.
    Earth Share of Washington is in a unique position in that we are a federation of 65 environmental nonprofits. As a communication nucleus (amongst other things) to these nonprofits, I thought weblog tools would be perfect to repost news, volunteer opportunities and events.
    Indeed it has been great and our web traffic is increasing steadily but some of the problems in the nonprofit world arise because of the things you mention. When promoting this technology, many folks get that glazed over look.
    In addition, many of our nonprofit partners are so busy on their issues, legislation, etc., that they do not write their own content. A great deal of environmental news here in the Northwest comes from mainstrem news publications. This is something that needs to change in order for grand scale content syndication and aggregation. While this is not directly related to this discussion, it is worth noting. It’s difficult to start evengelizing to our members when the blogging tools still aren’t quite as user friendly as they will need to be (although it’s getting better every day).
    Lastly, I’m grappling with how to take Earth Share of Washington’s website to the next level. I’ve implemented numerous RSS feeds, I ping weblogs.com, blo.gs, and registered with Blogdex. While traffic is steadily growing, it’s a slow process. I externally blog all of our member’s news because none of them produce an RSS feed.
    The question that I need to answer as a nonprofit interested in these blogging tools is “Okay, I’m syndicated, producing lots of content every day, now what?” I am trying to find out how I take all of these great tools and reach more people. My guess is that the lion’s share of work on my end is complete and that I need to now turn into an evengelist, but I’m still trying to answer that.
    Please excuse my rambling post, I really enjoyed your article.

  7. WorldChanging: Another World Is Here Avatar

    Weblog Strategies for Non-Profits

    Jon Stahl’s journal pointed me towards a terrific piece from October of this year at Radio Free Blogistan called Weblog Strategies for Nonprofits, written by Christian Crumlish. In the essay, Crumlish goes over some of the ways in which a…

  8. Who is Ronald? Avatar

    Weblog strategies for nonprofits

    Weblog strategies for nonprofits As we know, not everyone has the money to spend on a high-end CMS. Thankfully there…

  9. Headshift Avatar

    Weblog strategies for non-profits

    a long post about ways non-profits can create practical strategies for using weblogs in their work

  10. JayAllen - The Daily Journey Avatar

    Weblog strategies for nonprofits

  11. Paul Avatar

    I enjoyed your article, too. As the head of the web department for a non-profit organisation in the UK that provides e-commerce help and support for small businesses, we have spent the past year or so developing a community Weblog for the benefit of our clients (ie the businesses), advisers, and users at large. We’ve developed the system completely from scratch as a multi-author community weblog with subjet matter being along the lines you suggest. Anyone can register and write.
    The blog is used predominantly to communicate new stories of interest but we are aiming to make it more of a diary – communicating real experiences of real people and real businesses. The trickiest bit is not building the tools – it’s attracting the right people (and the right volume of people) to use them time after time.
    If you wish to look at our Weblog, then feel free:
    http://www.opportunitywales.co.uk/weblog.htm?weblogid=1
    we’ve also built a Web-based RSS reader so users can track news sources. All of our RSS sources are also UK nonprofits, so we are helping to further promote the work of the sector to our users. We are always delighted to work with other organisations to collectively develop and identify key areas of collaboration and social technologies such as RSS and blogs are easy yet powerful tools to help us do that.

  12. Joel Riker Avatar
    Joel Riker

    But it isn’t all going to devolve back to managing this exponentially increasing blogosphere? It seems that every information generation eco-system goes through the same evolution. At some point you end up with too much info to search through and you need experts to help. What is needed next is the equivalent of DMOZ but for blogs. At some point everyone will be required to make X number of edits a day to keep their blog-citizenship, or the whole system will collapse under its own giga-weight.
    Thanks.

  13. Marty Avatar

    Another interesting push for the nonprofit community to consider the value of making more of the thinking and learning of the organization available to staff, friends and the public. while the topic is not new and there are old blogs and rants on the nonprofit use of the bolg as a tool in their work, Zafa makes a contribution to the chorus pushing nonprofit staff to be more transparent through use of the blog as an easy content tool.
    http://greenmediatoolshed.blogs.com/gmt/2004/03/whats_a_blog_an.html

  14. j's scratchpad Avatar

    Weblogs for Nonprofits

    Over the weekend, a woman who works with a nonprofit asked me whether and how a weblog could benefit her organization.

  15. Gilles en vrac... Avatar

    Les carnets au service des OBNL

    Non-Profit Blogging Strategies

  16. JayAllen - The Daily Journey Avatar

    Weblog strategies for nonprofits