Just back from a good event held at Christian Aid by Waterloo, the NFPtweetup - aka the Not-For-Profit brainstorm/networking event/free cake and beer party.
Really good mix of online representatives from charities, (Barnado's, RNIB and WWF were all in attendance), and also some other really interesting bloggers/reporters (Andy Williamson in particular had some great political insight).
The focus of the event was the use of Twitter for non-profit organisations, and it was good to hear those truly involved in such sharing ideas, success stories and common road-blocks. It seemed that most agreed that a personal, relevant voice is most powerful, but the common social media problem of measurement cropped up as expected; in the case of the Dogs Trust for example, the number of actual dog-rehomings from the Twitter feed was relatively low, but the intangible brand boost and fund-raising potential could be significant but was as yet unknown.
From a personal perspective, it was great to be amongst such open discussion, and also felt good to be debating the power of social media for true charity-related goodness. There's another, apparantly larger event later this year, so I look forward to that.
Wednesday, 27 May 2009
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3 comments:
Thanks for posting about the event, Ross. I'm really glad you enjoyed it. I wonder if you'd be so kind as to add NFPtweetup as a tag?
Rachel
Thanks for listening to our mini-presentation. Metrics are definitely still an issue because there are so many facets of conversation to account for. The rehoming element is a bonus (and since we didn't know if we'd ever manage ONE, not low for us!) but we're focussing very much on engagement. We know people have volunteered and shown interest in community fundraising events because we're there.
The fundraising potential is something else entirely, and hasn't been our focus until now, which has been building a solid community. So it's not so much unknown/unmeasured as untouched! We're there as part of our marketing remit, as a customer service. Social networks are an online living room, and we have to be very respectful of that, especially when it comes to asking for money. Never say never, but even if you wanted a fundraising campaign to work you need a trusting community there to know you're not going to take it too far.
We've got lots to learn and discover - hopefully we managed to share something useful too!
Alex
Thanks for your comment Alex, and it's great from an agency perspective to hear such thoughts on social media.
I completely agree with the 'online living room' point, and was great last night to see that much of the kudos was put on charity feeds where personality meant more than pounds. Obviously the latter will always be a major factor and hence a consideration, as you say above, so I guess it will exciting to see how certain twitter feeds go about this through-out 2009. I guess the benefit of a NFP feed is that ultimately followers will expect such behaviour and requests, where as from a consumer brand such commercial activity is often frowned upon.
Ross
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