Calendar

Social media is a great tool to get the word out about your programs, but that’s only the beginning. Build strong communities through social media by creating meaningful conversations online and providing relevant, consistent information. This session will give you the tools to create your own social media plan, including tools for measuring success and templates for managing it all.

This break-out session is part of the Nonprofits Essentials conference presented by the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits and the University of Saint Thomas. The full conference runs from 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM. 

Give to the Max Day isn’t until November, why plan now? A lot of community resources will be devoted to promoting giving that day, and smaller arts groups have the opportunity to leverage that publicity and plans if they act early. Join us for a session that includes tips on:
1. Mobilizing an in-person event to get more publicity on Give to the Max
2. Ready teams with specific tactics and messaging, like targeting a Golden Ticket campaign.
3. Including Give to the Max, #GivingTuesday and year-end giving in a single, 4th quarter strategy to avoid “donor fatigue” while reaching new audiences to support your work.
4. Leveraging art as a donor tool to increase engagement (and fun) for supporters.

Attendees will be encouraged to complete a calendar plan before leaving the session, and include measurements to see what methods work best for your audience, and then hone those tools for the future.

You’ve got a lot of friends in the Hamline University network you haven’t met yet! LinkedIn can connect you to them (and lots of others) to help you uncover opportunities, advance your work goals, and much more. There are, however, rules to the road for using LinkedIn to enhance your network. Steve Boland MNM ’11, managing partner of Next in Nonprofits, will lead a short presentation on this tool, followed by questions and open discussion. The agenda for the morning includes:

• Using all the profile features of LinkedIn to help others understand your goals.
• Connecting to known alumni first, and learning about their connections.
• How to ask a fellow alum for support BEFORE asking for a connection.
• Using recommendations and endorsements to increase visibility.
• Publishing updates to LinkedIn to meet your professional goals.

This session is part of the Minnesota Nonprofit Technology and Communications Conference. Attendees must be registered for the full conference. See the links above.

Podcasts are exploding as a way to reach new audiences with deeper engagement than other content marketing channels like blogs or social posts. As nearly all adults now have smartphones in their pockets, the question turns to just what will they listen to while on the go? Capturing audience early and establishing a reliable channel to reach people can earn new supporters, use new content to introduce nonprofit missions to audiences and leverage market growth (according to Pew Research, podcast downloads have gone from 1.6 billion in 2012 to 2.6 billion in 2014) to grow mission impact. This session will cover the basics of the market, how podcasts fit within a range of content strategies to attract support, demonstrate equipment and tools, and talk about effective strategies such as publishing frequency, target markets, hosting and editing. To learn more, listen to the podcast about nonprofit podcasting at http://nextinnonprofits.com/mnnptech.

Steve Boland, managing partner, Next in Nonprofits and host, Next in Nonprofits podcast and Levi Weinhagen, communications and media specialist, Minnesota Council on Foundations and host/producer, The Pratfalls Podcast and network co-runner, Noise Picnic Podcast Network

Social media is a great tool to get the word out about your programs, but that’s only the beginning. Build strong communities through social media by creating meaningful conversations online and providing relevant, consistent information. This session will give you the tools to create your own social media plan, including tools for measuring success and templates for managing it all.

This breakout session is part of the full day conference. Registration for the full day is required.

This session is sponsored by the Professional Association for Computer Training (PACT) and is part of their monthly membership meeting. Registered guests are welcome.

Podcasts are exploding as a way to reach new audiences with deeper engagement than other content marketing channels like blogs or social posts. As nearly all adults now have smartphones in their pockets, the question turns to just what will they listen to while on the go?

Capturing audience early and establishing a reliable channel to reach people can earn new supporters, use new content to introduce nonprofit missions to audiences and leverage market growth (according to Pew Research, podcast downloads have gone from 1.6 billion in 2012 to 2.6 billion in 2014) to grow learning impact. This session will cover the basics of the market, how podcasts fit within a range of content strategies to engage learners, demonstrate equipment and tools, and talk about effective strategies such as publishing frequency, target markets, hosting and editing. To learn more, listen to the podcast about podcasting.

Foundations and corporations have a disproportionate impact on the direction of social sector work to the resources they contribute. Individual donors don’t yet change the direction of nonprofit work, but they could if they knew their own power.

Nonprofits know the drill. Foundations or large corporate funders go into a new strategic planning session and come out with the announcement: We are now going to fund X! All our support will help solve the problem of X! Charities then immediately begin the chorus “We solve X! We are the best at solving X!”

Even if that means recasting years of work trying to solve Y.

Social good organizations chase large dollars because it seems like the majority of small donors don’t have a collective voice at the table, so institutional philanthropy becomes the loudest sound about problems to solve. The vast majority of donated supported comes from individuals (http://givingusa.org/giving-usa-2016/) but those people aren’t seen as a collective voice with collective power, but rather as scattered, reactive voices.

That can change.

We now have tools to anonymize, collect, aggregate and understand the power of crowds, and it may be that institutional philanthropy will end up assuming a degree of influence commensurate with their financial support. It requires a willingness for charities to embrace the idea that their donors are worth this trust, and to learn how to share power with them.

There are steps necessary for local communities to begin emerging the voices of collective philanthropy, including:
1. Understanding their own data collection and anonymizing practices
2. Selecting emerging standards for sharing data about organizations, such as BRIDGE.
3. Uniting data across giving, including efforts such as #GivingTuesday.
4. Empowering both charities and donors to contribute to evaluation efforts and transparency, uniting both support and outcomes.