‘Worklife’ Posts⁽¹⁰⁾

I presented at Bridge this afternoon, a conference for non-profit fundraisers and marketers.

Our session (with Jocelyn Harmon of Marketing for Non-Profits fame) was a nice little road map for non-profits deciding if they should be in the social media space, and how to best go about getting there. I was brought in for case studies, and focused on Facebook Causes, Flickr, the new my.nature.org, and online donation based social media.

We actually had a third presenter, Roz Lemieux from Fission Strategy, but the fire alarm went off 30 minutes out from the end and she never made it podium. It was the last day of the conference, during the last session — why do i keep getting the graveyard shifts? — and nobody seemed interested in going back to the conference room after the all clear was given.

Now, if we had offered to finish it up at the hotel bar … who knows what sort of attendance we would have had.

Speaking of, the conference was at the Gaylord / National Harbor way out in suburban Maryland. The compound certainly was impressive, but in a fake, Disneyland sorta way. Everything was shiny and massive, but rang (more than) a little hollow. Not to mention, the Gaylord are the people who stole “The Awakening” from DC’s Hains Point, so I am already rooting for their speedy demise.

On the flip side, at least I have another reason to hate the ‘burbs … with all the baby shopping at suburban big box stores, I was obviously starting to run out.

Well, not really 🙂

Sea World / Busch Gardens and their “Animal Ambassadors” stopped by the Conservancy this morning … and a couple hundred of us gathered in the garden out back to see a Red-necked Wallaby, some type of lizard, an American Alligator and Magellan Penguin. Shamu (the killer whale) did not attend, nor was he expected (can you imagine *that* kennel carrier?)

I have to say that (a) the southern tip of Argentina is back at the top of my travel list, and (b) everyday would be better with penguins.

things are always a little nuts in march, but this we used earth day to launch a brand new engagement site.

we are using my.nature.org to serves relevant, personalized content to the Conservancy’s online supporter communities, as well as to post a ton of user-generated content we collect from our flickr efforts, the message of hope campaign, and our everyday environmental tips.

UPDATE: In the 18 months since the campaign’s launch, my.nature.org has garnered nearly 800,000 visits and 1.5 million page views. The site’s user generated content campaigns have become fixtures on the Conservancy’s social media presences, including Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. i’ll take it.

Over the last two weeks, we’ve been going nuts at the office as we run up towards Earth Day 2009. However, in the process, we managed to launch a nifty little site talking about the importance of bird conservation.

We recently participated in a sweeping study that looks at the health of bird populations around the country and what this means for the future of our birds. With that in mind, and in full recognition of how incrediably strong our birding community is, we launched a mini-site where people can learn about the threats to birds in the U.S., share their best places to bird, and submit their favorite bird photos.

We also threw in a sweet little desktop screensaver of bird images from our Flickr community.

I’ve never seen my name in lights, but maybe this is the next best thing … this week, someone donated space on the billboards that surround times square to the plant a billion trees campaign.

(that’s the nature conservancy’s tree planting effort in the brazillian rain forest that I raised money for last earth day — and helped launch as part of my day job.)

I haven’t heard anything about who the donor was, or how they chose us, but it’s fantastic to see such an important cause get the recognition (imho) it so richly deserves.

Presentation today with the fine people at Planit, an agency out of Baltimore. All my slides are mixed into the main presentation, but they are the case studies around registration form testing, landing page to donation form conversion, social media (flickr, facebook widgets) and lifecycle emails.

working in online fundraising, the fact that the end of the year is coinciding with the complete and utter collapse of our economy is casting a bit of a pall on what would otherwise be a festive time of the year.

this minor set back (alone) could have be taken in stride … but, when our philanthropy department neighboors started getting all up in our grill about how they were going to out “festive” us for the holidays, it was game on.

i mean, we can handle trying to compensate for the decline of western civilization, but to be called out for decorating supremacy was just a bridge to far.

we responded to this tyranny with resolve. we raided our collective attics, mobilizing all sorts of lights, ornaments, bows and garlands towards the decorating war effort (photos of the mobilization above).

but, in the end, it was over before it really even began … and philanthropy surrendered before we had the chance to get much past the “shock and awe” stage:

ok ok, you guys win this one. you really went above and beyond. I apologize for the trash talk and concede the title to you guys.

i’m a tiny bit sad they caved so quickly, because we had one more salvo of decorations we could have deployed had we needed the reserves to secure our merriment objectives.

i love the smell of trash talk in the morning.

mmmmmm, beeer.

hung out with a great group of greens tonight, drinking beer and otherwise promoting “good will” among eco-tweeting hippies (jcolman, starfocus, KSuzJ, and salsus … with special appearances by beautifulthangs and holdie1).

all of this camaraderie should have amped me up to go to work tomorrow morning (and it did), but it mostly reminded me that i need to polish-up a presentation on engagement for the d.m.a. conference the first week of november.

got pleeeeeanty of material, just need the time to put it all together … and work on my jokes. (“if you’re like me, and i am ….”)

happy arbor day!

well, i made my goal to plant 200 trees thanks in large part to a late flurry of my former hippie co-workers. (former => co-workers, they are all still hippies.)

a big thank you to everyone who donated … you helped a great cause that i truly believe in, and have helped me do something (personal fund raising) i have never, ever done before.

with that in mind, i gotta say … these last 3 weeks have really changed my world view on how to raise money.

first, i have a new found respect for the people I know who raise lots of money for hikes, walks and such. it isn’t easy to sell your friends and family on a cause, even one you love … and I was only looking for $200. i can’t imagine fund raising for a $3,000 walk.

second, as someone who does online fundraising for a living, i’ve been to tons of conferences where people sell this type of “friends-asking-friends” as the future of modern american online fundraising. all i can say is “hooey.” or “pthbthbthbthbt.” or some other onomatopoeia of your choice.

to begin with, it’s *hard.* a lot of people (me!) don’t like to ask for money. writing just four blog entries pitching the cause was excruciating. also, there is a very vocal group who *really* don’t like to be asked for money, either. (granted i run with a snarky lot, but still …)

imho, the benefit of doing this sort of campaign is the way it can energize an organization’s base, and as a great way to spread it’s message to new people. it’s hard to believe that some day organizations will get the bulk of their funding from a process that is so draining for half the personality-types on the planet.

but all this is water under the bridge … 15 *great* people steped up and give their hard earned moolah to plant trees in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. hopefully, we’ve helped jump start the Plant a Billion campaign, which has — in just three weeks — raised enough to funds to plant 276,080 trees.

p.s. the “chevy” widget above isn’t actually green-washing (entirely?) … the nature conservancy get $1 to plant a tree each time someone grabs the widget for their web site or social network page. you’d think that would be better highlighted somewhere …

p.p.s. now, i return you to your regularly scheduled blog without substance.