When Bruce Trachtenberg came to me soon after last year’s annual Communications Network conference in LA and asked if I might be interested in executing a national survey of foundation communications professionals, I was super stoked.  It wasn’t just because I had once been the communications director of the public engagement and survey research organization Public Agenda for six years and I am a huge social science data freak.

I was most excited to be a part of Communication’s Network’s “2011 Survey of Foundation Communications Professionals” because, coming out of the LA conference, I was deeply aware of just how much communications for social good has changed since the last survey in 2008.

I think that most of the time, social science research essentially provides evidence and some hard numbers for hypotheses that are already fairly well accepted.  This research was exciting because, while talking to our colleagues at the annual conferences is immensely helpful, there really isn’t much in the way of solid information about how the whole of the field is actually approaching its work on a daily basis.  The research is focused on foundation communicators, but it also has many insights for nonprofit communicators related to how foundations are prioritizing their communications funding and their relationships with grantees.

“Foundation Communications Today: Findings from the 2011 Survey of Foundation Communications Professionals” contains some serious revelations.  For one, we found that there are hardly any differences in the actions and priorities of those who invest time and resources in creating formal communications plans and those who do not. And yet, there does seem to be at least one crucial difference between the two groups that may make such processes a worthwhile investment of time (you’ll have to read the report to get the 411 on that teaser).

The “Websites, Online Capacity and Social Media” section of the report contains some of the information Bruce and I found most fascinating. For example, the organizations of nearly half our respondents now have blogs. In this section, as in the all the others, we really tried to connect various pieces of information from across the questionnaire. We wonder aloud why, since respondents say they want to do so much more with multimedia, the average budget allocations for multimedia are so small. We also go beyond the finding that almost all foundations are now engaged in social media to look at the differences between private and community foundations on which types of social media work best for them.

We covered much more territory in this survey than the 2008 survey in about a third fewer questions.  Still, the survey was a significant investment of time for those who participated (we know just how valuable 20 minutes can be in a foundation communicator’s day), so we are immensely grateful to all who participated and provided both essential quantitative answers and some immensely insightful qualitative responses.

The last section of the report presents some of the questions that occurred to us as we examined the data – implications for future discussions among us all.  We hope that you will take us up on the invitation to ask the questions that arise as you read the report.  My personal feeling is that the best research provokes even more questions than it answers.  I hope you will flatter us with many questions and comments.

Website Impact Without Redesign – How can you introduce functional elements that drive traffic to your website and increase audience interaction  without an expensive, time-consuming redesign?

We’ll be going beyond obvious enhancements like video, links to social media presences and recordings of webinars, and think creatively about functionality that enhances the unique mission of each of our organizations.

We have a great discussion leader who will help kick our thinking into high gear:

Jai Sen is a digital communications consultant with deep experience in interactive media, website and application development, and user experience design. He has led a wide variety of projects in the commercial and nonprofit sectors, including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation site redesign, and has most recently been an integral part of the team that relaunched the Atlantic Philanthropies website. He is currently working on the digital presence for the D5 coalition, an organization formed by grantmakers promoting diversity in philanthropy.

Here are the specifics on the next PPC-NYC meeting:

What:  Brown-bag lunch (that means bring your own lunch!)

When:  Wednesday, March 23, 2011; 12:00 – 2:00 p.m. (informal networking from 12:00-12:30, program begins at 12:30)

Where:  Ford Foundation, 320 East 43^rd Street (between 1^st & 2^nd Ave), New York, NY

Topic:  Website Impact Without Redesign. Jai Sen will lead our group discussion.

RSVP:  Space is limited and our last several sessions had waiting lists, so please let me know that you are coming by emailing me at mremaley [at] ppcnyc [dot] org

The January 2011 meeting of Public Policy Communicators NYC focused on Evaluating New Media Effectiveness – What are the best ways to measure and track the impact of new media efforts?

PPC-NYC member and Fenton Chief Strategy Officer Lisa Witter is a widely recognized leader in helping nonprofit and foundation communicators think through how to take full advantage of social media and systematically collect data providing guideposts to this largely uncharted territory.  She and her Fenton colleagues John Gordon, Hugh McMullen and Julie Leung lead our discussion.

A quick show of hands indicated that almost everyone in the crowd of 50 communications professionals was on Facebook, Twitter and/or YouTube (not surprising given the topic at hand).  But then Witter showed a slide featuring the logos of dozens of other social media that one could be using, some of which are gaining considerable traction in key segments of the general public.  So the first set of questions was, “Why are you using the social media you are? Are you using certain tools because you think you should? Or are you using the tools to achieve specific goals?”

GOALS SHOULD DRIVE TACTICS, not the other way around.

In traditional media relations efforts you don’t send out a stream of press releases every month with nothing particularly insightful to say or any specific audience in mind to say it to. So it is with new media.  Communicators need to start by establishing clarity about the audiences they are trying to reach and what mechanisms those audiences use to get their information.  But the big difference with social media is, of course, that it is not a one-way broadcast mechanism.  These tools are equally, and perhaps more valuably, about listening to audiences and involving them in fulfilling your organizational mission.

One of the main early points of the Fenton team’s presentation was this: Whereas in the past nonprofits were looked to as the “hero” who would save the day in solving social problems and communications reflected that position, now social media is shifting the “hero” status to normal people – and nonprofits must show leadership by engaging followers, fans and friends to participate in addressing societal challenges. Our social media communications and the metrics we use to assess those efforts must reflect the new reality. Therefore, the depth of social media assessment metrics should equal the depth of engagement with your audiences though these channels.

The New Metrics: See, Say, Feel, Do

In traditional media relations efforts we are starting to talk less about the number of reports we print and the number of “media hits” we get as authentic indicators of effectiveness. Instead, thoughtful communications pros are focusing on how effective we are at changing the direction of public conversation. This is also true for new media metrics.

“See” Metrics. The Fenton team first talked about a kind of metrics that I tend to think of as new “old school” ways of measuring social media effectiveness.  “See” metrics track how many followers, friends, fans and subscribers you have, how many page views you get, etc. These measures, like traditional impression and circulation figures in media relations, are all about potential. “See” metrics, say the Fenton team, are a measure of reach, but they are not a measure of success.

“Say” Metrics. This second level of measuring social media focuses on message acceptance.  It looks at things like how many Re-Tweets your messages get, how many “likes” you get, how many of your advocacy emails get forwarded, etc. “Say” metrics are a good indication of messaging success and affinity for your organization or cause.  They are critical to extending your reach and influence.  However, they are still not a true measure of influence.

“Feel” Metrics. This level of metrics gets at the degree to which your messages are being picked up and “remixed” by the public with their own thoughts and feelings.  These include things like Re-Tweets with personalization, posting of your information on Facebook pages with personalized messages, blog posts that pick up your information and comment on it and forwarded advocacy emails that add to your original message. The Fenton team says that “Feel” metrics are a true indication of influence and affinity, and a goldmine for insights on messaging development and identification.  However, “Feel” metrics require significant research and human interpretation – they’re not simplistic numbers.

“Do” Metrics. This is really the ultimate level of measuring new media impact, and certainly the ones that have proven the most elusive for most nonprofits and foundations. These measure how many people have been driven by social media interactions to do things like volunteer, donate, take action, sign up, attend events, send letters, etc. These metrics really indicate the degree to which your social media efforts have helped bring people into the public conversation.  Most of your social media efforts, say the Fenton team, should be focused on serving the Doers. You should use social media tools to be useful, to be relevant and to be social.  But “Do” metrics are not the end of the line.

How do you use social media to serve Doers?

Influence is the holy grail of social media. Influence determines whether people say and feel and do the things you want them to.

You want to build influence with staff, members, volunteers, media and policy makers as well as target audiences within the public. The key to influence: BE USEFUL. Useful is not just having a worthy mission, but giving the audience the information, tools and resources that allow them to carry your mission forward.

According to the Fenton team, content drives influence.  That’s why your expertise (and I would add your opinion), stories and data are more important than ever.  But that’s not to say you should be yelling all you know all day and expect to get traction in social media.

The Fenton team made the good point that social media is sort of like a party. Who do you want a party?  A person who stands up and screams his opinion and makes everyone miserable?  Or a “cool DJ,” who is knowledgeable to start with, but listens to what people want to hear, responds to the feelings of the crowd and gives their audience what they can really groove to. To be a cool DJ, your organization has to establish a system for creating an authentic loop that starts with listening, then sharing what you have, creating new works based on what you have and what you’re hearing, promoting the thinking and products of fellow creatives, and feeding back into the loop by listening to what your hear.

These are the specifics they provided on the “Cool DJ” loop approach:

LISTEN to what people are talking about on blogs, social media, and Old Media
SHARE interesting and useful content you find with your audiences
CREATE something interesting – an opinionated blog post, video, or graphic
PROMOTE content appropriately to bloggers or websites

Fenton then used a brief case study on American Jewish World Service to show just how this “Cool DJ” approach can play out for a nonprofit. They detailed exactly how AJWS listened to a controversial discussion involving Monsanto occurring online, then simply added to the conversation by taking what they knew and adding some pointed questions to Monsanto.  Their “creation” was essentially a simple remix, but they used AJWS’s expertise on the subject to enter the conversation and followed it through on a variety of channels, eventually resulting in their contribution to the discussion being widely disseminated and editorialized on a diverse array of sites, and forced Monsanto to issue an official response.  This single piece of content led to an increase in Twitter followers up by 100, retweets and mentions up from 11 to 63 from the previous month, Facebook fans increased by 60, engagement up 50% from previous month, increased ‘footprint’ – at least 27 more AJWS blog posts outside the site than before, and at least 1,000 clicks to AJWS advocacy forums from blog posts and social media engagement. See more details on the case study in the Fenton presentation, click here.

The Fenton team then gave some additional tips, like using very specific hashtags on Twitter, responding quickly to posts and queries from followers with useful information, and making sure that you’re not treating Facebook and Twitter audiences the same and posting monotonous information.

The Importance of Monitoring

One of the key points during the conversation was the importance of daily monitoring of what is being said about your organization, the topics of concern to your organization and what other key thought leaders on your topic are saying.  “You need to be listening to the conversation before you jump in and start talking.” On Twitter especially you need to weave your messages into the existing conversations to maximize influence. It was noted that Google Reader is one of the most important and powerful tools for monitoring what is going on across the internet/social media. The Fenton team provided an exceedingly valuable list* of listening and tracking sites that I am sure many PPC members will be checking out if they haven’t already.

Questions had been asked by the group throughout the presentation, but as the Q&A took off, it became clear that there were many questions about how to staff this kind of effort and what, if anything, could be moved down on the workload priority list to do this kind of measurement and social media monitoring.

Witter had noted early on that a recent Pew report indicates that social media is changing the way people live their lives, interact with others and receive information, and that our new communication practice simply needs to reflect that.

Some of the other practical tips that came out during the Q&A included:

-Don’t have a bunch of “logos” talking on behalf of your organization. It’s better to have just one “logo”/organizational Twitter feed and then empower many individuals in your organization to Tweet what they know and care about.

-Social media is the crisis communications professional’s best friend – but you have to be in it and active in conversation before crisis hits.

-If you are still doing lots of press releases, it may not be the best use of your time.  Sure, the process of honing a message and creating a short, effective headline continues to be extremely valuable, but actual press releases are antiquated and annoy many journalists.

-Look for ways to use social media to reward and reinforce your audience’s actions.

-Even though you get 140 characters on Twitter, it’s best to aim for 90 characters and a shortened URL so that followers have room to Re-Tweet with personalized additions.

-Blog posts are in some ways more effective in social media than video because followers really can’t chop up and talk through video as they can with your blog posts.

-It is very important to follow the reporters who cover your issues.

As is usually the case with PPC sessions, the conversation could have spilled over into several more hours and many were left wanting more.  Alas, we’ll have to pick up the conversation another day (or on Twitter, Facebook and other new media!)

*Fenton’s recommended sites for Listening & Tracking:

Google Alerts: Collects the daily, weekly or monthly mentions of particular keywords. You can receive these alerts in your email inbox or through your Google Reader.

Social Mention: Measures the social media traction of a topic or keyword.

Compete.com: Provides ballpark estimates on the traffic of popular sites.

Google Adwords/Keyword: Tests the popularity of your keywords, finds alternative keywords that may be more popular and make your content more SEO-friendly.

WTHashtag: Provides definitions for and measures the tracking of a hashtag.

Google Trends: Tracks trending topics by country, city and language and finds the articles that are driving interest. Searches for relative popularity of your issue or organization and compares it to other issues or organizations.

YourOpenBook.org: Searches Facebook for conversations on any topic.

Blekko: A search engine that helps you cut through the noise and find the most relevant information.

Netvibes: Collects the feeds of multiple blogs/sites and displays them in a dashboard format for easy reading.

Topsy: Tracks the flow of content across the Twitterverse.  Good way to find influentials.

Bit.ly [or J.mp]: A URL shortener site that also measures number of clicks, where people are clicking through and conversations around the site.

Google Analytics: Tracks traffic levels, its increase, traffic sources, trafficked key terms and/or phrases.

Feedburner: Measures the number of RSS and e-mail subscribers.

Tweetburner: Tracks the number of clicks on the links that you send out via Twitter, also shows how active your Twitter followers are with your content.

The subject that edged out the others and will be the focus of our January 24, 2001 meeting will be:

Evaluating New Media Effectiveness – What are the best ways to measure and track the impact of new media efforts?

Like many of you, I ventured into worlds of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube a few years ago to advance my organization’s voice.  Since then, we’ve learned that social media isn’t just a new way to distribute press releases, but an immensely valuable set of tools for listening to multiple audiences and potentially advancing programmatic goals. But while everyone seems to agree that communicators need to be using new media, few seem to have a handle on what constitutes success and how to figure out if you’re doing it well.

PPC-NYC member and Fenton Communications Chief Strategy Officer Lisa Witter is a widely recognized leader in helping nonprofit and foundation communicators think through how to take full advantage of social media and systematically collect data providing guideposts to this largely uncharted territory.  She an her Fenton colleague John Gordon will walk as through a discussion that I expect will help us all bring more clarity, confidence and efficiency to our new media efforts.

Here are the specifics on the next meeting:

What:                         Brown-bag lunch (that means bring your own lunch!)

When:              Monday, January 24, 2011; 12:00 – 2:00 p.m. (informal networking from 12:00-12:30, program begins at 12:30)

Where:              Ford Foundation, 320 East 43^rd Street (between 1^st & 2^nd Ave), New York, NY

Topic:              Evaluating New Media Effectiveness. Lisa Witter and John Gordon of Fenton Communications will lead off the discussion.

RSVP:            Space is limited and our last several sessions had waiting lists, so please let me know that you are coming by emailing me at mremaley [at] ppcnyc [dot] org

Lisa Witter is a social entrepreneur, communications strategist, author, blogger and social commentator with deep expertise in the not-for-profit field, philanthropy, politics, women’s issues, health, social marketing, new media, international development, corporate social responsibility, and leveraging pop culture for social change. In 2010 she was named one the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders. As chief strategy officer of Fenton, the largest public interest communications firm in the country, she heads-up the firm’s work in innovation and co-leads the practices in women’s issues, health, social entrepreneurship and global affairs.

John Gordon is Fenton’s Vice President of Digital and has been an innovator in online engagement for over 15 years, with extensive experience developing integrated communications and marketing strategies for not-for-profits, political candidates and socially-minded businesses. Gordon was formerly the director of new media at Spitfire Strategies, where he helped clients such as the Hewlett Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Joint Ocean Commission use new media to drive supporters, win campaigns and build capacity. While at Spitfire, Gordon worked with the President of the firm to develop a comprehensive step-by-step guidebook to help non-profits plan public policy, advocacy, and social marketing campaigns.

We would like to again thank all of the wonderful folks at the Ford Foundation – and especially PPC-NYC regular attendees Fiona Guthrie and Alfred Ironside – for helping make this learning series happen.  They’ve been exceptionally supportive and we are extremely grateful. Also, the Communications Network’s Bruce Trachtenberg has been essential to this organization’s success from the very beginning.

I hope to see you on January 24.

The communications world has changed tremendously over the past five years.  There’s no arguing that.  But just how many ways has it changed for those of us in cause communications?  Social media, the evolving newspaper industry, “net neutrality” issues, personalized technology and mobile devices everywhere are just a few innovations and developments that come to mind.

Fenton Communication’s Chief Strategy Officer Lisa Witter has attempted to make sense of it all and delineate the major trends in a presentation titled “The New Normal: 12 Driving Forces in Communications.”

She has delivered this outline recently to groups such as the Skoll World Forum, the Conference Board, the National Association of Social Work Deans and Directors and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and most recently she spoke to a large group of communications professionals at a gathering at Philanthropy New York.

While her presentation and its core concepts were developed for purposes unrelated to the Communications Network annual conference, it is quite a nice quirk of timeliness that her 12 Driving Forces are being disseminated just before our annual meeting that starts on Wednesday

Many of these 12 forces, plus those on other people’s lists, will surely be discussed, dissected and debated at the conference.

The 12 Driving Forces Witter talked about had been identified through a scenario planning process lead by former MoveOn.org executive director Eli Pariser that drilled down on the question: “What is the future of media and how should cause communicators be preparing for the challenges and seizing the opportunities they present?” While the ideas she is presenting to audiences across the country come out of a learning process that occurred in Fall 2009, Witter is still refining and reorganizing the main points as the media world continues to see major shifts in short periods of time.

These are the most recent formulations of her 12 Driving Forces:

1. Mobile: Internet Everywhere
2. Globalized Net
3. Information Overload and Curation
4. Personalization and Filtering
5. Broadcast to Bi/Multi-Directional
6. The end of journalism?
7. Fragmentation by Affiliation
8. Convergence
9. Micro-Targeting and ROI Advertising
10. Transparency as a Value
11. Feedback is Instant
12. Authenticity/Voice/Uniqueness as a Value

As with many macro-level analyses, the areas of exploration here are not news to anyone who closely follows communications issues. Rather, it is the thoughtful explanation of how things are changing and what are the implications for practitioners around each of these driving forces that really has salience.  For example, it is not enough to know that consumers are using technological filters more and more to help manage the information coming at them. You have to know what filters they are using, how they work and how to design your communications to rise to the top. And it’s not enough to know that citizens are expecting greater transparency from all institutions, but exactly what that means for any foundation or nonprofit is different and requires a process of real soul searching delving into practical implications.  Witter’s presentation was a great prompt for my thinking on these topics.

I want to share with you what Witter says all this means for “cause communicators.” I will be keeping these implications in mind as I discuss communications trends with my colleagues in LA later this week.  She says that, while good storytelling will continue to be essential, how and where those stories are told and how they are passed along will change.  She says that to take advantage of the media evolution, you’ll need to develop these three new core competencies:

Content: Cause communicators must become their own media by creating original content that moves by being timely, emotion-driven and targeted.  Broadcast on multiple media platforms where you can engage audiences directly. Be part of the conversation by sharing and “remixing” content by others.

Calculate: Take advantage of digital metrics and the social web to “listen” online to who’s talking about your issues and how they’re talking about them.  Develop campaigns that join these conversations.  Take risks, experiment and refine.  Nurturing a culture of failure can lead to the best ideas.

Community: The media evolution has made it easier for people with the same passions to connect with each other.  Your role is to help them find each other and mobilize a community around your cause. This means putting your supporters, not your organization, at the center of your communications.  Catalyze ideas and encourage others to crowd-source and use their own creativity and networks to spread the word.

This is sage advice that communications professionals should take to heart and use to help their organizations navigate the new landscape. The 12 Driving Forces Witter has identified are important ones that we should all be thinking about as we evolve in our own communications work.  It’s rough terrain out there.  Better have as accurate a map as possible.

Can games move people in ways that other forms of media like print, interactive websites and video can’t?  Some really smart people in foundations, government and media say it is absolutely true. However, if you are a skeptical communications professional, you probably have a lot of questions about that assertion.

A few weeks back, I came across a valuable piece on “social games” written by Marcia Stepanek in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. The bulk of the piece was an interview with Games for Change chairman Alan Gershenfeld in which he made some very bold claims about the state of the social games movement, including:

“Today, almost every major foundation and major government agency is either funding games or looking at funding games.”

And…

“There are, certainly, a lot of examples of people who have created games that have created behavior change in the real world.”

Now, I believe that I am fairly well tuned-in to what philanthropic and nonprofit leaders are doing and what new forms of communication are gaining traction. I’ve heard a few examples of interesting social games that are indeed intriguing and I am very impressed that the MacArthur Foundation is investing $50 million in its Digital Media and Learning initiatives that have a strong emphasis on games. Still, I don’t think that that the vast majority of social-change leading organizations out there have given games a great deal of consideration.

That’s not to say that they shouldn’t be thinking about the potential of social games.  But we do need to provide more information about who is experimenting with social games, what are some concrete examples of success that point to the real potential of the medium and what are the factors that foundations and nonprofits considering gaming ought to think through before leaping forward.

Thankfully, two exceptionally thoughtful people helped me clarify my own thinking about social games.

First I talked to Jessica Goldfin, a Journalism Program Associate at the Knight Foundation who is immersed in the foundation’s growing commitment to social games.  She told me that Knight’s interest in the medium grew organically out of its Media Innovation Initiative after three of the 2007 Knight News Challenge winners were cutting-edge games that engaged citizens. That was three years ago.  There was no need to persuade Knight’s president Alberto Ibargüen of the medium’s potential, he was actually the major proponent of exploring what social games could accomplish.

While Goldfin herself is passionate about games and their ability to draw people into social problems and get them thinking and acting in new ways, she says that the foundation took an especially deliberate and studied approach to funding in this area.  As Knight sought to develop a strategy for funding games, Goldfin and her colleagues first gathered research and conducted interviews from a variety of sources including experienced game developers, leading academics in the field, the Entertainment Software Association, other funders and Games for Change. From their analysis they constructed a matrix of factors they felt were necessary to consider before funding a game, such as game genre, target audience, platform, time spent in the game, development costs, production length, necessary maintenance, marketing and distribution, and shelf life. “Game development is complicated,” says Goldfin.  “One of the most interesting things we learned is that sometimes the most compelling or successful socially-minded games don’t appear to be ostensibly related to the driving issue, but instead use design to engage people in new experiences. The best of these can create connections that lead to real world action.”

When asked about other foundations and nonprofits that are leaders in the field exploring the power of social games, Goldfin talked about MacArthur’s efforts, the National Science Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson’s Games for Health, ADM’s STEM education game, the UN World Food Programme, USAID and the Obama Administration.

“Games are becoming a dominant form of media,” she said, and then talked about Knight’s work in Macon, GA, and Biloxi, MS, where the Foundation is working with the game design firm Area/Code to create locative games to engage citizens and promote community problem solving.  In Macon, the game in development will use an alternative form of local currency to connect residents to each other and to their community. In Biloxi, the game will focus on increasing awareness and changing habits toward disaster preparation.”

According to Goldfin, there are lots of innovative social games that are getting traction.  She named the multiple games being used effectively in educational curriculum by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s iCivics initiative; an initiative of the World Wide Web Foundation that teaches kids how to create their own games; the World Bank Institute’s Evoke and the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s Budget Ball game, among several that foundation has created.

She also talked about several of the leading game development companies doing innovative work on social games including Area/Code, Filament Games and Persuasive Games.

Next I talked to Games for Change’s new Co-President Asi Burak. He says that games have the power to bring people into a social condition that other forms of media cannot, that they “allow people to make real, meaningful choices and to get feedback on those choices.”  He described media like print and video as “linear/passive media” and said that those forms mostly project from a single, scripted perspective, whereas games allow people to explore multiple perspectives in an immersive way.  “It is quite powerful to put a person in another’s shoes. And, you can let people experience failure in a safe environment that allows for solution creation they wouldn’t otherwise experience.”

He noted Alan Gershenfeld’s previous comments on how several foundations that are funding games are becoming “accidental publishers,” and may not be aware just how complicated game development can be. It’s not like producing a video, which is fairly straightforward and the product can be played on many platforms.  Games production is exceedingly complex and the technologies for every platform are different – so you can’t produce a single game product that runs on the web, on a game console and on the various mobile platforms for iPhone, Android, etc.  Therefore, foundations and nonprofits interested in doing games need to take the time to really think through who they are trying to reach, what platforms the audience uses (and in what context) and what concrete social change they want to move toward.

In the coming months, Games for Change is going to be putting on their website a lot more information and advice for foundations and nonprofits looking to get into games, including a list of developers, case studies and key issues to consider.  They are also going to offer consulting services to those who would like more hands-on guidance.

He gave a very helpful list of “Eight Steps” in the game development process that any serious organization should discuss and detail before even beginning to reach out to potential game developers:

1. Audience. You should define your audience in very fine detail.  What is the age of the audience? What is their geographic location? What language do they speak? What is their socio-economic status? What is their gaming ability?
2. Context. Where would the audience be playing the game, in front of a computer, on the subway, on a mobile phone in Tehran? Would the player be assisted by a moderator or a teacher?
3. Goals. This is all about the impact you want to make.  What do you want users to take away from the game? Do you want your audience to take action in the real world? Donate? Learn specific information or skills? Have a change in perception?
4. Platform. This is strongly tied to audience, context and goals.  A game that runs on iPhone will appeal to a certain audience.  If you’re trying to reach young, poor African men, then an SMS-based game is more realistic.
5. Financial model and sustainability. You can’t just budget for the cost of creating a game. You need to budget for ongoing maintenance and upgrading of the game itself as well as costs for dissemination and publicizing the game beyond its launch.
6. Game Design. Not until this point can you fully consider the actual construction of the game and what “gameplay” will be taking place on the screen.  All the other decisions in the steps before should feed into the action on the screen that might be appealing to users and drive the impact goals you defined.
7. Execution. Given all the decisions that have been considered in the previous steps, who might be the best development team to partner with?  Plus, who are the other partners that would be key to distribution efforts and other aspects of sustainability?
8. Assessment. Developing concrete metrics of desired impact is important and obviously should be strongly linked to the goals of step 3.  Discussing the metrics is important, but so is planning how information will be collected and the costs associated with evaluation.

I asked Burak about some of the best examples of leaders in the field.  He also named MacArthur Foundation, the Knight Foundation, the World Bank Institute, and iCivics, but added USAID, the European Union and a host of U.S. government agencies.

At this point, I felt like I had heard a lot of really important information about what to consider and what some of the leading organizations are doing. But I still had questions about demonstrable impact.  I had asked both Goldfin and Burak to name an example of a game that had really created some significant social improvement.  Burak talked about how the “Darfur is Dying” game had generated “50,000 actions” (in the form of letters to legislators) and about an organization in India that had partnered with mobile carriers to embed an HIV awareness game on 64 million devices that had actually generated 10 million sessions.

Both Goldfin and Burak are strong believers in the importance of dedicating funds to evaluate the impact of games and are confident that research and experience will eventually substantiate the power of social games.

Goldfin and Burak also both said that the future of social games is surely in mobile platforms – games that are played on phones and other small devices.  More and more nonprofits and foundations are indeed creating iPhone and Android “apps” that provide consumers quick access to programmatic information, so perhaps social games are the next wave.

In the end, I came away from these conversations even more intrigued by the possibilities that social games present.  The complexity of the process for creating and disseminating them is daunting, but I think many nonprofits and foundations are up to the challenge.  I will definitely be keeping my eyes open for examples of success in this medium and maybe even playing a few social games myself to get a feel for what works.

This is the second in what is to be a series of posts for

One of the great things about today’s dynamic communications landscape is that the new technologies provide so many opportunities to take your message directly to audiences without having to get past traditional media gatekeepers. Of course there are costs involved, measured in money, human resources and other opportunities. Still, if we’re willing to explore some of these new distribution methods, we may find that we can successfully reach more — if not more important — audiences that can be useful to our organizations and the work we do.

A case in point: more and more foundations and nonprofits are hosting events that are broadcast live on the web.  However, the big question is how successful are they at attracting audiences to these events?  Wouldn’t it be great if there were a channel that would let people tune in and watch what’s on the web?  That would enable some organizations to offer live events that could compete with likes of CNN, Fox News and the BBC for viewership.

Well, it turns out there that someone is already on to this idea and is testing a new service called LiveMatrix that appears to have the potential to serve foundations and nonprofits in just that way.

Full details about the service are on the Technology Review blog.  Some points worth summarizing here are these:

According to Technology Review, LiveMatrix…

…tracks live events on the Web… By providing a listing for the Web that resembles TV timetables, the company hopes to “make the time dimension of the Web searchable,” according to cofounder Nova Spivack.  The company launched today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York City, sharing more details of the look and feel of the site. In the video below (clicking on the Technology Review link above and viewing the video there is highly recommended), Spivack demonstrates LiveMatrix in action. The company is indexing about 80,000 live events per week to start, and plans to increase that number going forward.

Any organization can start their own channel on the site (similar to YouTube channels, which many nonprofits and foundations now have) and can have their content alongside events hosted by the State Department, NPR and C-SPAN, as well as non-news content producers focused on sports, shopping and other topics.

If you’re wondering how many foundations and nonprofits are actually doing live web events, you’re not alone.  No one yet is keeping track of the overall numbers of foundation and nonprofit-sponsored events that are broadcast via the Web. But a quick Google search reveals a lot of events live foundation events have taken place recently and several more are scheduled.

For example, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation broadcast a speech by the founders last October from Washington, DC, titled “Why We Are Optimists.”  The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation shared a live panel discussion last February from Kansas City, MO, on “Spurring Business Startups and Innovation in Clean Technology.” The Kaiser Family Foundation has a live web series called “Today’s Topics in Health Disparities.” And last March, the United Nations Foundation broadcast a live memorial service to honor 101 UN personnel who perished in the Haiti earthquake. From the descriptions alone,  these events are as interesting, if not more so, than the content of most mainstream news producers. All of these events also have a potentially much larger audience than just those who could be alerted to the event by a press release, a direct email to established audiences or by the old-fashioned AP datebook.

The utility of LiveMatrix for nonprofits and foundations comes down to the site’s demographics and reach.  If they can show that they have traction in reaching so-called “influentials,” it would seem like a no-brainer to plug into.

Given that the site is in beta, it is really hard to predict the future size and demographics of its future audience and how useful the site might be for nonprofits and foundations hosting live events.  It could be the new YouTube, only organized better.  Nonprofits and foundations getting into it early could be among the first to establish channels that get traction and a large following.  There’s lots of potential there and a foundation that is producing lots of content like Kaiser Health News could really make a big splash with it if it takes off.

Just with any technological innovations, there are lots of questions about how useful this new resource will be.  I’m looking forward to updating this post as LiveMatrix moves past its beta stage and begins to market the service broadly.

Several major recent developments that have contributed to the fracturing landscape will be the jumping off point for discussion.  These include: the startling federal court ruling on “net neutrality” that may change how major media conglomerates package programming and freeze out competitors’ products; the release of The Knight Commission report “Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age;” the diminution of influence newspapers and TV journalism and related decline in resources available for news gathering; and the vast growth of information dissemination on social networking and news aggregation sites.

For communications professionals, it may seem like the shaking ground is turning to quicksand.  This conversation will help us figure out just what the terrain is and how to find solid ground. So, here is the summary information on the next PPC-NYC meeting:

What:  Brown-bag lunch (that means bring your own lunch!)

When:  Wednesday, May 12, 2010; 12:00 – 2:00 p.m. (informal networking from 12:00-12:30, program begins at 12:30)

Where:  Ford Foundation, 320 East 43^rd Street (between 1^st & 2^nd Ave), New York, NY

Topic:  Navigating the Shifting Media Landscape. Vincent Stehle will lead off the discussion.

RSVP:  Space is limited.  Please let me know that you are coming by emailing me at mremaley at ppcnyc dot org

Vincent Stehle is a consultant to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. He was, from 1998 to 2009, the Program Director for Nonprofit Sector Support at the Surdna Foundation, a family foundation based in New York City with assets approaching $700 million. The Nonprofit Sector Support Program focused on strengthening the policy and advocacy role of nonprofits, their internal management, and their ability to adapt to changing political, economic, and technological environments. Under his direction, the NPS program became a leading force in support of nonprofit technology and public and independent media and spearheaded the practice of social enterprise and other new funding strategies for nonprofits. Before coming to Surdna, Stehle worked for ten years as a reporter for the Chronicle of Philanthropy, where he covered a broad range of policy and management issues for the nonprofit sector. He has also written extensively for other publications, including The Washington Post, The Nation, and Symphony Magazine.  Stehle has served as Chairperson of Philanthropy New York (formerly the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers) and on the governing boards of YouthNoise, VolunteerMatch, and the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN). Currently he is a columnist for the Chronicle of Philanthropy and serves on the board of Grantmakers in Film and Electronic Media.

Timothy Karr oversees all Free Press campaigns and online outreach efforts, including SavetheInternet.com and its work on public broadcasting, propaganda, and journalism. Before joining Free Press, Tim served as executive director of MediaChannel.org and vice president of Globalvision New Media and the Globalvision News Network. He has also worked extensively as an editor, reporter and photojournalist for the Associated Press, Time Inc., New York Times and Australia Consolidated Press. Tim critiques, analyzes and reports on media and media policy for the Huffington Post and on his personal blog, MediaCitizen.

We hope to see you on May 12.

Click here to see the video on YouTube: Pathways To Housing Installation

I don’t know how much impact it has had on raising awareness and funds, but the campaign itself has gotten coverage on NPR, The Huffington Post and The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

This is a really creative effort.  Hats off to the folks at Pathways to Housing for trying something new.

Miller has broken up her advice into topic areas: “A Custom News Feed,” “Check Your Lists,” “Attend a Conference, Virtually,” “What’s Around You Right Now,” and “Ask Questions.”  Each section has at least one good piece advice for the information consumer and a key understanding for the information distributor.  Check out the piece!

By the way, don’t you love that little graphic I made of the Twitter birdie eating the Times?  ha ha.  Old media getting eaten by new media!  That laugh just never gets old, does it?