The last couple of days of the skillshare focused away from the specific Latin American offices, and took a broader look at three areas of fundraising-related activity – Internet, Direct Dialogue, and Supporter Services. That meant it was my turn to make a presentation and I teamed up with Lale Metzinger, the international director of online fundraising for Greenpeace to focus mainly on areas where we felt there were new opportunities for the Latin American offices to move forward with internet fundraising and campaign integration. I concentrated on the theme of using social networking for fundraising and building broader suppprt lists. I’ve made posts on this blog previously about using social networking approaches to improve campaigning and fundraising effectiveness. This is a new area of activity for Greenpeace – like many organizations, they have traditionally viewed their supporters as sources of donations rather than as co-participants/activists.
Highlight of our final skillshare day was a detailed report from Marcelo Iniarra on the No Whaling Virtual March (http://whales.greenpeace.org) that Greenpeace ran this past spring. More than 60,000 people around the world signed up to support Greenpeace’s No Whaling campaign and emcampment in South Korea by uploading pictures of themselves saying “No†to commercial whaling. These photos were projected onto a special public screen that Greenpeace set up outside the building in Ulusan, South Korea where the International Whaling commission was meeting.
I also took time to record a podcast with Marcelo on the origins of the idea, the challenges faced in launching and managing such a complex online project (there were 11 microsites in different languages), and also on the emotional impact that the photos submitted by people all around the world had on the campaign, and how the online fundraising message was integrated into this mobilization campaign.
The podcast is published on the FundraisingInnovation.com blog:
http://www.fundraisinginnovation.com/podcasts/vol_3_0805.mp3
Today was Greenpeace Skillshare day 2 and I participated in the Internet fundraising stream (go figure). We got more detailed presentations of online fundraising results and online development plans from each of the four Latin American offices. Overall, it’s clear that Internet fundraising is one of the major fundraising channels in this region – in part because these offices were only established in the early 90’s, and really grew into their maturity during the boom years of the Internet. Greenpeace Argentina in particular has been a vanguard of Internet innovation for the whole Greenpeace global network, driven by the former fundraising director Marcelo Iniarra and his team. Greenpeace Brasil has emerged more recently as an online powerhouse and is rapidly expanding its online donors base – with a very impressive number of new monthly-giving online signups each month. Greenpeace Mexico and Greenpeace Chile also have ambitious plans, but are more limited in the resources and staff support they have available for new online initiatives.
One particularly interesting trend here is the close integration between the traditional silos of fundraising, campaigning, and communications. Many of the online initiatives we’ve looked at today have a tight integration of the activism, communication and fundraising messages, and there seems to be a sense of common purpose in acquiring both new donors and new cyberactivists, instead of the competition/ownership of email lists between departments that sometimes leads to mixed messages for the online audience. Every one of these offices seems to be in an expansive stage at the moment, with lots of energy and vision to double or triple the size of their online activity in coming years – and that may could be really underpinning that sense of common purpose.
Yesterday at the Greenpeace Latin American fundraising skillshare, we have heard overviews from four different Latin American countries about their fundraising and communications/campaigning programs and their success and challenges.
Greenpeace’s Latin America program was launched at the Rio climate change conference in 1992. At first it was run as a project of Greenpeace International based out of Amsterdam, and the senior people were all europeans, with support staff hired from the local populations. But it became clear that in order for Greenpeace to have any lasting impact in Latin America, it needed to develop a regional base here, and 4 national offices were opened in Mexico, Chile, Argentina and Brasil. After more than 10 years, the investment and effort by Greenpeace has had a significant impact in the region. Greenpeace is easily the most recognized environmental NGO throughout the region, and the Latin American offices have shown significant leadership and innovation in campaigning, fundraising and communication around environmental issues.
Greenpeace Argentina in particular has been one of the world’s most forward-thinking organizations in using the internet for fundraising, and at one point was raising more actual dollars online than was Greenpeace USA. We saw today a video report – which I will hope to upload to here shortly – about Greenpeace Argentina’s “Jaguars†campaign that uses motorcycles and mobile video cameras to catch illegal loggers in the act and block them in much the same way that Greenpeace did with small zodiac boats stopping whaling ships in the 70’s and 80’s.
One highlight of Greenpeace Brasil’s presentation was a discussion of how they have dealt with the issue of rainforest destruction in the Amazon. For the past 5 years, there has been an international campaign operating in the Amazon, largely run from Greenpeace’s Europoean offices, that has been causing much conflict with the local population, including death threats against the lead GP organizers. Over the past year, GP Brasil has taken over the campaign, and their approach is to build better connections with the local population, to gain their trust and an understanding that they have a common set of goals. This reminds me of the way that Greenpeace Canada has tried to build alliances with lumber unions and towns in British Columbia to work toward a sustainable logging industry that preserves jobs and communities while protecting the ancient rainforest.
Overall, there has been an emphasis on Dialogo Directo (Direct Dialogue), which is a form of street-based, face-to-face fundraising that is an important fundraising program being developed across Greenpeace’s international network. Readers in the UK are familiar with “chuggers†who are on street corners of many UK cities, but this fundraising approach is having great success right now all around the world, including the 4 GP Latin American offices, and I have also heard that GP India is having immense success as well. Given the challenges of technology, and particularly internet connectivity in developing countries, the use of face-to-face fundraisers, who also serve as campaign promoters and communicators seems to be a natural fit.
Ok, today will be more detailed workshops on direct dialogue, Internet fundraisng and donor/member services ..
Long day(s) of airflights — including 6 hours in the world’s most uninteresting airport, Washington Dulles – but this morning I woke up and looked out to see the palm trees and crashing surf of Ubatuba, Brasil where I’ll be for the next few days with a group of about 30 Greenpeace fundraisers. A few of the folks here are familiar from an online course that I ran earlier this year for Greenpeace International Last night’s get-to-know-each-other hangout around the coutyard pool of the hotel was a kind of jam-up of Spanish, Portuguese and English – “Portu-ñgol-glish†which is going to be the language of choice.
Frank Guggenheim, the Executive Director of Greenpeace Brasil gave a short keynote welcome in which he highlighted a couple of themes that we should keep in mind through our work over the next few days:
1. Image and language need change over time
Citing the example of the stalwart German magazine Der Speigel, which was unassailable atop the German media for decades, but which has been knocked out of that position recently by new format magazines, Frank reminded us that Greenpeace can’t continue using the same imagery and language from the 60’s and 70’s when Greenpeace was born. We need to find new ways to communicate its message or risk becoming sidelined.
2. Communication media change over time
Greenpeace was born at the height of the television era, and grew up as a mass-media organization. Now we are in the age of the Internet, and Greenpeace has been developing new ways of communicating that fit that medium. But already we see the next technological wave coming – cellphones/SMS — so just as Greenpeace was starting to get comfortable with Internet/Web, we will have to quickly learn new ways to engage with people using cellphone/SMS.
Just got confirmation that I’ll be participating in a Greenpeace regional fundraising skillshare in Brazil next week (Aug 14-19). I’ll be leading a couple of discussions on new trends in online fundraising and online engagement, and in particular I hope to convene an overview/discussion of new online engagment tools such as blogs, wikis, RSS, tagging, flickr, de.licio.us, etc. that are probably famliar to many people reading this, but which are just starting to emerge into the everyday practices of mainstream nonprofits.
I’m expecting there will be some interesting stuff to report back. Greenpeace’s recent No Whaling Virtual March (http://whales.greenpeace.org) was developed by Marcelo Inniara, the online engagement guru from Greenpeace Argentina. More than 60,000 people uploaded photos of themselves holding Stop Whaling signs and messages to be projected onto a billboard in Seoul, South Korea where the International Whaling Commission was debating a return to commericalized whaling. It’s a great example of the “show the network” school of online mobilizing, and I love just browsing through the photos that have been submitted. It really communicates the sense that 60,000+ signups is more than just a number — it’s a vast crowd of real, individual people.
Another interesting thing about the No Whale campaign is that a large percentage of the signups to the campaign — with uploaded photos and all — have come from non-western/developed countries. In fact, signups from some of the larger southern countries such as India (4300), Brazil (4500) easily surpassed more traditional online activist countries such as the United States (1400), Italy (1100), and France (2200). As well, a handful of signups came from very non-traditional activist countries such as China (93), Indonesia (65), and even Albania (4) andIraq (2). Greenpeace is actively ‘globalizing’ and has opened offices in India, Thailand, Turkey and Lebanon in the past few years, so these signup point-of-origin numbers could be an indicator of success.
I’ll try to report some of the more interesting learnings, and also what the online engagement paradigm looks like from within a large, global activist organization.
Here are a few thoughts on using SMS/Mobile-text devices for campaign engagment
SMS/Texting is considered an emerging media for engaging young/hip audiences with an organization’s campaign work. The commercial sector has been exploring SMS/Texting and mobile phone-based markets for several years and has built an active marketplace around downloadable content such as Ringtones, Games, MP3 files, screensavers, background graphics and even video clips on multimedia phones. These commercial engagements are centred on the point-of-sale/content-delivery model where information flows primarily in one direction - from vendor to purchaser. In this model, the mobile phone functions mainly as a purchasing/acquisition device that links the user directly to the vendor.
In the context of a mass mobilization campaigns, focusing on content download and delivery (ringtones, screensavers, games, etc.) as a form of engaging the SMS/Mobile market limits range of SMS/Text communications to being just another single-directional channel for delivering campaign content – reinforcing a communication mode that is a one-to-many push-broadcast model. Individuals sign up to receive SMS/Text-based information related to the campaign and over the course of the campaign they receive a range of different content, but it is all driven from the ‘centre’, and its delivery to campaign subscribers is viewed as the end of that particular transaction.
The commercial content-sales/push model is only one means yo employ SMS/Texting devices for campaign engagement. The social networking aspect of SMS/MobileText can be an important element of campaign promotion – one that reflects more accurately the way that SMS/MobileText technologies are used. Billions of SMS messages are sent every day, and the majority of these are personal messages sent from person to person rather than being content delivery based on commercial subscription/push models.
This is based on the core function of SMS/Texting/Mobile phone technologies for connecting individuals with their social networks – friends, family, colleagues, etc. – rather than being focused on information searching and delivery (as per the Web/Internet). SMS/Texting is more like Email than the Web – it is a medium for content exchange, not content delivery. SMS/Text should be primarily viewed as a peer-to-peer medium. In general, when someone is using their SMS/Text device, the most accessible functions they have available are related to sending messages to the people in their address books/contact lists.
Peer-to-peer messaging is an important opportunity for campaign promotion and mobilization. Social networking tools and approaches to campaign promotion can be used to tap into the existing SMS/Text/mobile phone networks of campaign supporters – engaging them as message-relayers and “sneezers†who will forward campaign materials to their contact lists and peer networks. ‘Send to a friend’ messages can be presented as a core action activity for campaign supporters, and mass networking targets can be identified and promoted to involve supporters in actively spreading the world about the campaign. Other means to leverage the social networks of campaign supporters can be tested through the direct promotions such as contests and points-reward systems. As well, active support for self-organized and locally-focused action groups and networks can motivate campaign supporters to be active message forwarders.
Here are some potential scenarios for promoting peer-to-peer social networking through SMS-based campaign messaging:
Scenario One: Identifying and supporting message forwarders (“sneezersâ€)
When individuals register to join the campaign – via SMS or Email or Web, they are asked if they would like to help promote the campaign by being special SMS promoters who would operate as viral message forwarders (“sneezersâ€) to their contact lists. These sneezers would receive special messaging related to the ongoing campaign, recognizing them as special campaign volunteers and supporting their role as important network builders
Scenario Two: SMS Viral Call
A campaign message delivered via SMS to the list of subscribed activists. This action contains background and instructions to participate in a special SMS action, but also contains a specific encouragement to forward this action to selected contacts in recipients’ address books as a way to help spread the word and make the campaign more effective. This form of campaign marketing is very effective – it can reach a highly targeted audience with little or no additional investment by the organization – since both the audience filtering and delivery cost are borne by the message forwarders. This form of SMS Viral call should be issued only at peak campaign moments to ensure the highest response rate. Optionally, a special message to could be sent to identified “sneezers†that instructs them to promote the campaign to their contact lists, and encourage pass-along follow-ons.
Scenario Three: Post-action chaining (sequenced actions)
When a campaign participant engages in an SMS action – whether downloading a file or texting a short code to take action on a petition, they receive a follow-up message from the campaign coordinators that encourages them to tell others about the action they have just taken. The message to be forwarded is pre-prepared, and requires only that the participant select the contacts from their address book to receive the special message telling them about the action, and inviting them to participate as well. An optional personal note could be added as well by the original participant.
