Shake the Pillars

With MySpace and other social networking communities now firmly rooted in the internet mainstream, activist organizations are starting to think about just how to integrate these kinds of spaces into advocacy and mobilization campaigns. A few organizations have set up early footholds: Amnesty USA’s youth program has a rich, well developed MySpace page, and organizations like Oceana and WWF USA have popular MySpace pages as well. However, these pages are mostly about building an expansive sense of community - as in “friends of …”, and feel more like big, unorganized social gatherings than targeted and focused campaign communities. But that has to be expected - MySpace wasn’t built to be a campaigning platform, so it’s probably not going to be a suitable stand-alone home site for many campaigns, and will more likely play a complimentary role as a recruitment and outreach engine - that’s where it’s real strengths seem to be.

The prime attraction for setting up a MySpace campaign page is the potential for building an organic, self-propagating network of friends and friends-of-friends who link to your MySpace page and become an channel for delivering campaign messages and engaging potential activists and donors.

One of the big challenges that I see at this point is the gawd-awful interface that MySpace provides. Its like stepping back into those “build-your-own-webage” tools that were around in the late 90’s when the web was still a new and somewhat loosely defined medium - before professional web designers established the base design language that we’re now familiar with for making web pages that “work” (headers/footers, navigation menus, breadcrumb trails, etc.). It certainly doesn’t look like it’s going to be easy to build engaging MySpace websites to enthuse and mobilize campaign supporters.

Fortunately the geek community has already started playing around with the MySpace system and are discovering some of the tricks to break the mold, and create MySpace page layouts that are more customizable and brandable. I have started playing in my own sandbox (MySpace profile) to start exploring building up a branded MySpace page for campaigning.
Have look here: http://www.myspace.com/hjcnewmedia and let me know if you’ve got any good suggestions or other example sites to look at. It’s pretty basic at this point - just a start, really.

I’ll be updating this MySpace profile as I learn more, so keep an eye on this link, and I’m happy to provide the CSS code if anyone is interested.

The good folks at MobileActive have just launched the first of a series of strategy guides for using mobile media in social activism. The first edition, authored by Michael Stein, is titled Using Mobile Phones in Electoral and Voter Registration Campaigns.

This guide examines successful ways that organizations have used mobile phones in electoral and voter registration campaigns and shares lessons learned from these experiments.

Download the guide here.

This strategy guide series is a collaborative project linking MobileActive, Green Media Toolshed, Surdna Foundation, and NTEN. Look for more great material to come.

I recently attended a working session with Greenpeace International about a new project they are developing that is challenging the traditional way they plan and execute their campaigns (i.e. normally behind closed doors).

This fall a new online community website will appear that will invite Greenpeace members, supporters, and environmentalists from around the world to help plan and execute a new global campaign. It is been dubbed “open source campaigning”, and is an experiment in tappig into the collective intelligence of the environmental activist community.

It’s going to be fun and unpredictable, and not without risks, but it’s seen as a way of injecting new energy and creativity into the process that Greenpeace uses in developing and delivering its campaigns. It’s also innovative in that the project is being lead by a team from Greenpeace’s Argentina office in Buenos Aires, and not in Europe or North America. (It’s the same core team who delivered the highly successful Virtual No Whaling march in 2005, that mobilized more than 70,000 online activists to upload photos and statements to bring a powerful visual message to the International Whaling Commission meeting in South Korea).

The first phase of this new open source campaigning project is going to be internal to Greenpeace staff/volunteers only, but it will be opened to the global public in the 2nd round, and I’ll post more information when it’s available.

Beth Kanter at NetSquared has posted a nice roundup of some early entries in the nonprofit / youtube mashup category. The success of youtube is putting some new spark into the “what can nonprofits do with online video” discussion - read Beth’s article here, and watch for more developments to come quickly as this year’s hot online trend rolls out into mainstream society.

My innner fundraiser is eager to point out that submissions of personal video testimonials recorded by donors about why they chose to give to a particular cause or campaign could be very powerful tool for pitching to new donors. Youtube style video uploads would add a whole new level of storytelling and emotional impact to the personal fundraising pages that are supported by companies like Justgiving, Artez and GiveMeaning.