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>>How has Facebook been quantifiably helpful to your nonprofit? What, of evident value, has it helped you accomplish, and how will you build upon this success?>>
The Genocide Intervention Network, with which I work, has had many,
many successes with Facebook. Here are a few:
1. In November 2005, the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act was being
held in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by then-chair Richard
Lugar. Using Facebook, we created a group and organized students -- in
particular, students in Indiana, Lugar's home state -- to work on the
issue. Instead of calling Lugar directly, we identified the senator's
top 200 donors using OpenSecrets.org, and students asked them to
contact Lugar in support of the bill. Two weeks later, the bill was
moved out of committee and passed unanimously in the Senate. This
wouldn't have been possible without using Facebook to identify
students in Indiana who cared about the issue.
2. Last fall, we were invited to take part in the Ploughshares Fund
"Peace Primary," in which 12 organizations collected donations under a
slogan of "vote peace," and the organization with the highest donation
got an additional grant from the Ploughshares Fund. While we didn't
win the competition, we were able to raise about $13,000, and nearly
all of our advertising was done through Facebook and MySpace.
3. While Facebook Causes has not been a significant source of
fundraising for us -- largely out of a lack of staff time to fully
strategize our use of the platform -- it has been a powerful way to
organize members and keep them informed outside of the usual modes of
contact. Our "official" cause has about 1,700 members[1], but user-
created groups benefiting us have even more, with the largest topping
out at 3,800[2]. In our experience, despite Causes' orientation toward
fundraising, it's actually the most effective Facebook App for keeping
members engaged and active, so while we haven't raised a lot of money,
we think it has had a big impact. This demonstrates why we think these
social platforms (Facebook and others) are so powerful -- because
members are already there, taking initiative, organizing groups/events/
causes -- we want to encourage this kind of self-initiative and
provide them with tools and resources. And maybe at some point we'll
raise some money through them as well, but we think the real power
here is in building the permanent anti-genocide constituency, our true
long-term mission.
4. In the summer of 2007, STAND -- GI-Net's student division --
launched a campaign for their high school students called "Picture a
World Without Genocide."[3] Students submitted hundreds of pictures of
them advocating for more action on Darfur and raising money for the
peacekeepers there.[4] In July, STAND joined 11 members of Congress
including Majority Leader Steny Hoyer at a reception in the Capitol,
where the pictures were presented in a display spelling the word
"Darfur."; John Prendergast of the Enough Project gave the keynote
address. All the organizing for this event -- which engaged students
and made a significant mark on Congress by increasing the number of co-
sponsors of Darfur bills -- was done through Facebook.
5. STAND holds an annual day known as "DarfurFast," in which high
school and college students give up one luxury item for the day and
donate the proceeds to GI-Net's civilian protection program in Darfur.
Collectively, these small donations have added up to $450,000 over the
course of three years. Last year's event, on Dec. 5, has raised (to
date) $150,000 from 450 high schools, 330 colleges and all 50 states
plus DC. Although much of this work is done through the existing STAND
network of chapters, Facebook has been invaluable in keeping members
enthusiastic about the event through updates, photos and videos.
I recently gave a presentation for the Web Executive Seminar on our
work with Facebook; you can see a copy of the slides (and hear the
audio) at this link:
http://www.slideshare.net/secret/i37vhiBy21oXRP
Some of what I mention above was described earlier in an Idealware
article and a panel discussion at NOI:
http://www.idealware.org/articles/social_networking_genocide.php
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/events/2007/noi.html
You had asked about Facebook, but we have also found success in
MySpace, LiveJournal (a vast untapped resource!), change.org, social
media like Flickr and YouTube, and more recently BlackPlanet and Eons.
Hope that helps!
--ivan
1] http://apps.facebook.com/causes/view_cause/1034
2] http://apps.facebook.com/causes/view_cause/581
3] http://www.standnow.org/picture_a_world
and http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2500546272
4] http://www.facebook.com/photo_search.php?oid=2500546272&view=all
and http://flickr.com/photos/genocideintervention/1139095036/in/set-72157601478164502/
.
