Oct 29, 2009
My notes from the Government 2.0, Non-Profits 2.0 event (by Karen Kay)
Moderator: Alan Silberberg, CEO You2Gov, His business focus is to address the need for everyday people to get in touch with their legislative officials in all 50 States.
Panel: Debra Bowen, California Secretary of State, Beth Kanter, Fellow at Packard Foundation, Gwyneth Gailbraith, Director of Development and Evaluation, Opportunity Fund
Initial thoughts on social media use in their respective areas:
Debra Bowen commented on the need to engage people in the process. The voter outreach program, as one example, showed the need to work collaboratively and leverage networks to effectively stay in touch by using Social Media.
Beth Kanter highlighted that by taking advantage of the social cultures out there and encouraging conversation through social media that when you do need to “rally” an effort, you already have a passionate audience engaged.
Gwyneth Gailbraith is focused on small business lending, match savings programs for education and small business ventures. Social media helps them build a field for the U.S. There are taking small steps to integrate social media into their outreach programs.
Non-profits and how they intersect with the government. How to use these tools to effectively?
Alan - fear of change - some feel that their livelihoods may disappear because they will be replaced by these tools.
Debra brought up a great point that with this new media, you increase communication, which is great. However, you still have the same number of staff to respond. You need to come up with a process to encourage people to seek first for the information on the web-site and if it’s not on the web-site - then send in a question. This is still a work in process. Biggest hurdle for adoption - government officials are not tech experts and that due to 140 characters - subtleties can be lost. Once you hit enter - it’s out there.
Beth introduced the idea of network weaving. She has developed a way to get her network to become self-organized and she acts more as a project manager. She will start conversations and let the network takeover the discussion. Some monitoring and input from her will keep the conversation flowing.
Beth used the Michael Vick story as an example. When he decided to come back and volunteer with the humane society - their social media person -raised the visibility of this activity, people were allowed to vent their opinions, have a conversation and then eventually the situation was diffused.
Gwyneth reminded that due to her audience it is necessary to take baby steps right now. Have found volunteers to help them by tweeting and giving them guidance on where they should be focused. One problem they would like to solve is the immense reporting requirements for CDFI funds, as an example. They are exploring how to use social media to make this process easier.
Alan revisited his idea of fear of change. If he was able to build a web-site in 41 days, but when you take this conversation to a government agency - there is a six month bid and longer decision making process. Is there fear of change or people losing their livelihoods?
Debra - you need to involve people in the formative part of the project. This allows for people to be part of the process and gain their buy-in.
Beth - most of the fear is from within. If a non-profit does not have a social internal culture, you need to create this before you can go external. Common concerns she has heard from non-profits include: “It will make us look more human”, “opens us up to public criticism and we prefer it does not exist”, etc., etc. It will open the floodgates of information and that will overload us.
Alan asked Gwyneth: “Are small business adopting these tools?”
Gwyneth’s response: Not all businesses need a social media strategy. A child care business in a home does not need a web-site, etc. Really need to have a social media plan to understand what you are trying to achieve and not necessarily try to do everything. Need to show clients how their information will be used and the good results and potential pitfalls. Most are really excited to know that people all over the world are inspired by their story.
Some general trends discussed included:
1. Alan spoke about the most recent Iran election and the tools were used to help promote an information forum to help with the election process.
2. How do you bring a social media strategy into an organization - Beth mentioned that have a group of people model the behavior you want them to adopt.
3. Non-profits that need help with starting their social media projects - Beth said on her twitter site there is a list of non-profit twitters and chose the non-profit tech twitters.
4. Debra brought up using social media, once you are established and familiar,can take as little as 10 minutes a day.
I thoroughly enjoyed this event. There was a great group of non-profits in the audience who were impressed with the valuable information they received. Good networking exchange before and after the event. The group was large enough for broad conversations, but small enough that you got a chance to meet and exchange ideas with several people.
Karen Kay
karenlee.kay@gmail.com
