The document discusses how non-profit organizations and NGOs can use social media to further their goals in 3 main ways: internally to organize themselves, externally to build relationships and engage communities, and by learning from case studies of organizations that have successfully utilized social media. Some key benefits highlighted are reaching large audiences at low cost, fostering collaboration, and empowering organizations to have outsized impact. Challenges like maintaining an online presence and competing for attention are also addressed.

1. Using Social Media
to Bootstrap an NGO
Case studies and clinic
Suw Charman-Anderson
Social Technologist

2. Why use social media?
• Community of interest (and action)
• Tools are cheap or free
• Tools are easy to set up and use
• Can reach huge numbers of people...
• Where there’s internet access
• Where there’s widespread
technology

3. Inside
• Use tools internally to:
• Organise yourself and team
• Collaborate on documents
• Share information
• Save information

4. Outside
• Build relationships with your
constituency
• Create space for a community to grow
• Rallying people to action
• Fundraising
• Support for your constituency
• Draw on wisdom in your community

5. Third party tools
• E.g. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,
Wordpress.com, Flickr, Delicious
• Pros:
• Cheap or free
• Easy to use
• No technical skills needed
• No web hosting needed
• Built-in audience

6. Third party tools
• E.g. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,
Wordpress.com, Flickr, Delicious
• Cons:
• Reliant on unpredictable services
• No control over down-time
• Lack of customisation
• Can get lost in the noise of other users

7. Overall benefits
• Allows you to punch above your
weight
• Engenders trust
• Promotes fast growth
• Creates reliable relationships
• Makes you more effective/efficient

8. Pitfalls
• Takes time to nurture a community
• Maintaining presence in social
networks and writing blogs takes time
and effort
• Competition for attention is tough

9. Case Study 1

10. Open Rights Group
• Non-profit digital rights advocacy
group
• Started July 2005
• Now an established voice in digital
rights community, government and
media.

30. •

31. Lessons learnt 1
• Community building takes time
• You can’t skimp on talking to people
• Find a volunteer to help with your
comms
• Don’t hold the reins too tightly
• Work in the open when you can

32. Lessons learnt 2
• Everything takes longer
• Delegate as much as possible to
volunteers
• Get a volunteer manager
• Don’t be afraid to nag
• Tap into local design and development
community
• Get a good project manager

33. Lessons learnt 3
• Don’t burn out
• Be selective in your goals
• Build relationships with the media
• Tie online into offline

34. Case Study 2

35. Ada Lovelace Day
• International day of blogging
celebrating women in technology
• 24th March
• Founded in 2009

42. Lessons Learnt
• If you have an idea people care about,
it will spread like wildfire
• Ask people to do something they
would do anyway, e.g. write a blog post
• Make it easy to sign up
• Help people share
• Be prepared for success.

43. Using what’s
out there

50. Learn from MySociety
• Use the tools that already exist
• Can you repurpose someone else’s tools?
• translate into your own language
• collaborate to extend functionality
• If what you need doesn’t exist,
collaborate on new tools
• Don’t try to do everything yourself
• Waste of time
• Slows you down

51. Clinic
What do you
want achieve?

52. Thank you for
listening!
Suw Charman-Anderson
social technologist
suw.charman@gmail.com
@suw on Twitter
charman-anderson.com
chocolateandvodka.com