PREFACE

Just 35 seconds after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti began, 316,000 people were dead, 300,000 more were injured, and more than one million were displaced. As we witnessed one of the worst natural disasters in modern times, nonprofits such as Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, American Jewish World Service, and the American Red Cross rushed to the aid of people in Haiti and began coordinating large-scale advocacy, fundraising, and community response through multichannel campaigns.

The U.S. Fund for UNICEF raised $3 million from donors within the first hour after the earthquake struck.1 In that same time, the American Red Cross raised more than $3 million just through mobile donations.2 Apple helped by creating a page in its iTunes Store that asked people to donate up to $50. Altogether, organizations raised $4.6 billion in the days following the disaster, according to the United Nations.3

Nonprofits raised more than $50 million of this sum through mobile fundraising for the first time in the United States by $5 and $10 donations made via text message.4 And it was the third time in history (after Hurricane Katrina and the South Asian Tsunami) that the nonprofit community used integrated messaging and multichannel strategies to engage people on a massive scale, not just to raise record-breaking funds, but also to share personal stories, messages, photos, and videos from the ground and to coordinate relief efforts.

How did they engage people so quickly and raise so much money? First responders, nonprofit staff, and the media already on the ground in Haiti weren’t taking photos or writing updates about Haiti’s toppled buildings, torn-up streets, affected families, only for the benefit of staff back in the office. They were capturing all of these stories to engage with people watching in disbelief from around the world. The content they produced was easily shared by the organizations and then reshared by supporters via email, social media, texting, and word of mouth.

Several nonprofit bloggers, social media influencers, and celebrities who had large followings also pitched in to direct people to Haiti relief campaigns online, especially ones raising money for critical supplies such as food, bottled water, blankets, tents, and antibiotics. Some nonprofits and supporters posted the latest resources and news on their blogs and websites—how to locate family members, updates on damage, etc. Others pushed that information out to their networks.

These efforts required that nonprofits do a considerable amount of work and coordination, both internally and externally. Wendy Harman, director of social engagement for the American Red Cross (ARC) during the earthquake, knew that to make a real impact on the relief efforts she had to coordinate with different departments across the organization, including the communications, fundraising, and mobile team. She also recognized the importance of rallying the ARC community on social media to ensure that updates were posted and cross-posted frequently. She and the rest of the ARC social media team personally engaged in social media efforts to ensure that the right text-to-donate numbers, links to resources and assistance, and answers to common questions were answered promptly and correctly. Harman found every minute of those first 24 hours crucial to engaging the Red Cross community.

These multichannel strategies were successful because they focused on four key organizing principals:

• Share the emotional story about what’s happening on the ground in real time.
• Identify and tell prospective donors and volunteers what is needed and how they can help immediately.
• Tell (or better, show) donors and volunteers the real impact that their money and time will have on the ground.
• Bring people together through the shared experience and the mission of the organization.

As we mentioned earlier, relief organizations used a mix of online channels to get the word out about the disaster and to mobilize prospective donors and volunteers. They used email and texting for fundraising appeals; social media to share the latest news, information, and how to donate money; blogs to share stories of people impacted by the disaster; and their own websites to pull the content together. They used these channels to ask for money, build community, and spur action by:

• Reporting on devastating conditions in Haiti after the earthquake
• Asking people in Haiti and around the world to share their personal stories, video footage, and photos
• Providing supporters with multiple ways to donate—online, mobile texting (Short Message Service, SMS), calling, and sending checks by snail mail
• Informing donors about how their dollars would be spent—on medical supplies, fixing broken water systems, providing nonperishable food, creating temporary housing, distributing hygiene kits, etc.
• Recruiting emergency aid volunteers
• Asking technologists to collaborate on building web and mobile applications that would map the relief efforts and quickly spread vital information to relief workers and first responders
• Sharing information about support services and news syndicates, and about Haiti and organizations working there before and after the earthquake
• Documenting the state of communities and infrastructure after the earthquake on photo-sharing sites such as Flickr and video-sharing sites such as YouTube and Vimeo

It’s these moments when we realize that the Internet, social media, and mobile technology have evolved into some of the most effective tools to facilitate social change that the world has ever seen. Prior to their prominence, nonprofits faced a difficult challenge: time. Can you imagine how long it would have taken for the news of the Haiti earthquake—the true scale of it—to reach the rest of the world if it had happened even just 20 years earlier? It would have cost organizations so much more time, resources, and money to connect directly with people, gather and share stories and resources, mobilize action, and reach people anytime, everywhere.

The world witnessed powerful movements—civil rights, anti-apartheid, anti-nuclear proliferation, and others—effectively advancing social and political change long before the Internet. But the nature and immediacy of technology have changed how organizations operate and how they structure campaigns—and not just during natural disasters. Every nonprofit and social change maker now has the power to use multiple online and mobile channels to amplify their message, foster a community, support activism, and cultivate donations 24 hours a day.

But the power of these tools goes even further. Their real power comes from organizations using them to craft and implement multichannel strategies—that is, integrating messages and actions across platforms. These messages and actions reinforce each other and fuel both online and offline peer-to-peer connections that can power social change anytime, everywhere. That’s how real change happens, and it is what inspired us to write this book.

WHO SHOULD READ THIS BOOK

Do your communications, fundraising, and grassroots teams work in silos? For example, when a critical campaign opportunity arises and you need to act on it immediately, is there a power struggle between departments about which email list an online fundraising appeal or an action alert goes to first? Is there a lack of coordination between departments during these important campaign moments, when time is of the essence and you must ensure that key messaging across multiple channels is succinct and optimized for each channel? Is it like pulling teeth to get a consensus between the web, outreach, and social media staff about what should be posted to your website, blog, Facebook page, or Twitter account, and when? And by the time all the internal politics have been worked out, do you miss major fundraising or advocacy opportunities across all of these channels, or both?

If you answered yes, you are not alone. We have worked with hundreds of organizations over the past decade and have witnessed these problems time and again at organizations large and small, experienced and inexperienced.

Social Change Anytime Everywhere is a practitioner’s guide for nonprofit communications, marketing, fundraising, and social media staff who struggle with departmental politics and silos. It is for those who recognize that they need to be more nimble with their approach to building and mobilizing their communities—through multifaceted campaigns and by integrating online channels with offline tactics—if they want to be successful and make an impact on the ground. If you’re ready for your organization to develop a shared vision and a plan to integrate multichannel strategies for communications, advocacy, fundraising, and outreach—to connect with constituents and engage new supporters online—then this book is for you.

Inside you will also find sections focused on tactics that drill down into how to achieve measureable results across multiple channels. Whether you’re a communications manager, social media campaigner, development director, advocacy or community organizer, or web strategist, this book will provide you with all the tools you need to launch successful online multichannel campaigns to help you change the world.

WHAT DOES ONLINE MULTICHANNEL MEAN?

Social Change Anytime Everywhere is based on our personal experiences and research over a decade of working with and for many nonprofit organizations and social movements. Our work has involved using multichannel campaigns to deepen connections with constituents, move supporters up the ladder of engagement, and empower communities to take action both online and on the ground. But what exactly does online multichannel mean?

You may have heard the term multichannel in the context of advertising or fundraising, usually in reference to uniting an online channel (email, websites, social media, etc.) with an offline channel (direct mail, TV, telemarketing, etc.). An advertiser might use multichannel to refer to a coordinated campaign that integrates both TV and direct mail to promote a product. Or a fundraiser might use multichannel to refer to a campaign that syncs up a direct mail appeal with an email message or series. But in our work and in this book, online multichannel refers to strategies that operate across several online channels—namely email, websites, social media, and mobile.

Today, it’s essential that nonprofits use multichannel strategies to integrate their communications and outreach efforts throughout their organization to reach goals and create greater impact. In this book, we focus on three core categories of communications and outreach: advocacy, fundraising, and community building. From your website to social media, email to mobile messages, online to offline, multichannel strategies require coordination and creative thinking across teams and departments, and a focus on the core of your work beyond any one specific call to action.

In the following chapters, we show you how you can create online multichannel strategies to meet your mission and campaign goals, and how other organizations are successfully integrating multichannel efforts into their work.

WHAT’S AHEAD IN THE BOOK

In Chapter One, we give you an overview of the multichannel technology landscape as it impacts organizations and your constituents. This includes a comprehensive data overview that we hope will serve as a resource for you and your staff—especially if you need to sell the importance of investing in these strategies to others in your organization.

Chapter Two outlines the five principles of operating in an anytime, everywhere world. These essential principles start with differentiating your community from the crowd and build toward creating a movement. We cover how to approach your work, as well as how you actually do it—both in strategic planning meetings and in your everyday work.

Chapters Three, Four, and Five address the planning and implementation of online multichannel strategies for advocacy, fundraising, and community building, respectively. These chapters constitute the meat (or for vegans, the protein) of the book. They provide examples and case studies to illustrate these strategies in action, and they cover both the specific techniques and the big picture directions for success.

Chapter Six gets down to what integrated multichannel campaigns look like in action with a close look at case studies from the National Wildlife Federation, Surfrider Foundation, and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

By Chapter Seven, you’re ready to get started! We explain how to equip your organization and staff so that they’re ready for anytime, everywhere advocacy, fundraising, and community building. Changing aspects of your organizational culture or staffing model may seem daunting, but we provide the guidance for getting started immediately.

And just in case some of your colleagues are resistant or nervous, or just aren’t as excited and ready as you are about the enormous potential of these tools and strategies for your organization, Chapter Eight offers practical advice for easing the transition from being a reactive organization to a proactive one.

In the Conclusion of the book, we invite you to enter the next era of change making. We discuss disrupting the nonprofit sector and the importance of taking chances, learning from failure, iterating, and not giving up. We also share trends on the horizon so that you can prepare to seize forthcoming opportunities.

We hope that when you finish this book you will join us online at www.socialchangeanytime.com to continue learning, ask your questions, and share your own stories and examples of multichannel strategies that are helping your cause and your organization achieve real impact.

READING THIS BOOK

The book is filled with a lot of strategies and tactics for creating social change anytime, everywhere that you can utilize for your upcoming campaigns and across different online channels. If you are a small organization, pick two or three strategies to test from each chapter. Then analyze the results. If you are a mid-size or large organization you may be utilizing a few of these already, and we encourage you to test at least three new strategies listed in each chapter to see if it increases your ability to spark advocacy, raise money, and engage your community.

As you read the book, you will notice that some sections are highlighted in gray. These special resource sections include how-to notes, additional background or case study information, and tips for using the tools discussed in the chapter. If you initially want to bypass these sections and come back to them later, that’s fine. We designed them so that they are easy to find, in case, for example, you need to find a passage during a meeting to share something important with your teammates!

We’ve also included many notes throughout the book. Sources for data or research, links to organizations or online tools, and even resources available for further reading and support are all documented in the Notes section. These additional resources are also available on the book’s companion website at www.socialchange.com.

CONTINUING THE DISCUSSION—WHILE YOU’RE READING THE BOOK, AND LATER ON

We couldn’t write a book about multichannel strategies without employing multiple channels for continuing the conversation and inviting you to connect and learn beyond the book that you’re holding now. Please visit http://www.socialchangeanytime.com, where you’ll find updated data and resources, as well as opportunities to engage and ask questions. We’ve designed the website to complement the material in the book and to help you put into practice the lessons and suggestions you’re about to read.

NOTES

1. philanthropy.com/article/Response-to-Japan-Disaster/126760/

2. articles.cnn.com/2010-01-18/tech/redcross.texts_1_red-cross-haiti-relief-facebook-and-twitter?_s=PM:TECH

3. www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/11/haiti-earthquake-recovery_n_1197730.html

4. www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=1194