Serendipitous & Curious Coincidental Timing - different tweets this week on social good - more than just writing a cheque (check) :Mia Freedman promoting Cause Marketing Vicks Road to Relief, David Gurteen tweeting Mashable & also Rosabeth Kanter tweeting her blog post - both on social good.
Gen's X & Y redefining the path of generosity laid down by Babyboomers & their parents. And many Boomers taking this new path of social capital & social entrepreneurialism too.
Kanter's article is aimed at the corporate - citing benefits arising from social good that corporates can reap economically and also less tangibly by better engagement & commitment from employees.
Mashable's article puts the legs on Kantor's premise of the benefits of social good at engaging around the values of people employees :
“Having 10 million people is more important than 10 million dollars,” said Ben Rattray, founder and CEO ofChange.org. “For advocacy you need to mobilize people, and the web helps you mobilize people like never before.” Rather than see the community as the end goal, Rattray sees it as an important resource in the social good tool belt. “… People’s voices are more important than their pocketbooks. ... As much as philanthropy often relies on money changing hands, Edelstein sees social good as “being conscious of what’s around you. It’s not necessarily writing a check.” Those other intangibles include community building and creating a real discourse around a problem. Social good also comes down to a feeling of participation. Donations are one-off payments — they are essential but finite. Social good, via social media, can help make those donors feel like they are part of the organization and part of the solution. It’s a win-win, where non-profits receive sustained donations and donors feel involved and engaged. If you don’t take those steps, said Edelstein, your audience won’t be there when you call for action.
Traditional fundraising certainly isn’t going to go away (nor should it), but social good does present a new set of philanthropic tools that can benefit donations, advocacy, and online communities. When asked about whether social good will stay separate from fundraising, Edelstein responded: “At some point it’s all going to be the same thing. It has to be.”
An earlier Mashable article describes how social media trends are shaping social good and I've sneaked in a few other examples from my Googlereader RSS feeds
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- Crowdsourcing - great example from @niryendac of African ICT geeks translating Google web search interface into Chichewa enabling folks from Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia & Zimbabwe to access Google in their own language (there's also the Chichewa-English dictionary project )
- Location & Mobile Apps
- Mobilizing actions eg often arising out Barcamps (eg #sibsyd) or like Crisis Commons for Haiti & beyond (another Mashable social good blog post)
- Cause Marketing - @maifreedman's support for campaigns such as Vicks Road to Relief on Facebook is an interesting intersection of the Individual with Cause Marketing
- Cooperation between Non Profits & Individuals
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- citing Rosabeth Kanter's piece on need for Non Profits to reinvent themselves, be inclusive & leverage the influence of Individuals with huge social media following - a slightly different take on their traditional approach of using TV & newsprint ads featuring celebrities to gain attention & donors
- Ashton Kutcher's achieving 90,000 malaria nets for Senegalese people - Mashable's comment : "When you see stuff like this happening, though, you can’t help but feel excited to be part of a positive movement in history for a change."
- @QueenRania continually tweets for social good for disadvantaged across the globe
But it's not all ICT driven - sometimes Community Radio works better according to a WSIS discussion shared by @AlisonHornery
And from @Chieftech's blog post on the March 2010 Social Innovation Barcamp : What we need is open innovation for social good, not social media
I find it so inspiring to read of events like Social Innovation BarCamp Sydney in August 2010 (see Tony Hollingworth's #sibsyd post). So many talented folks contributing their time and talents to others for the common good, quite unselfishly.
