Code, Camera, Action

Kristin, my colleague at the Case Foundation, has some good advice for folks thinking of starting their own nonprofit: think twice. http://www.socialcitizens.org/blog/start-nonprofit

The post goes on to list some ways of partnering with existing orgs -- to do the good works without having to do your own 501(c)3. With one nonprofit for every 300 Americans, that's probably a good idea.

But I wonder what it is about nonprofit thinking that makes successful, businesslike individuals forget their horse sense. Nonprofiteers seem enamored by the dream -- all the people they will help, how they will at last be able to give back. Here's one example I've retold: Helping Ghana Without Reinventing the Wheel.

The reality is, as usual, more complicated. Nonprofits are business in every sense save the profits. And removing profits -- and the resources that come with them -- complicates things indeed. I wish for everyone thinking of starting a nonprofit some clear-eyed market analysis.

1. Not-for-profit doesn't remove competition

You will face competition for donations. You may face competition among other providers of similar services. You will certainly face competition for attention. How is what you're doing unique? What about your approach or beneficiaries will help you reach donors? Or, as Kristin suggests, might you be better to contribute to, or partner with related organizations?

2. Robin Hood is romantic, but it's easier to sell to people who need you

Most nonprofits ask for donations from the rich to provide services for somebody else. In this sense, help is a luxury good. "Give us money to solve a problem that other people have" isn't the strongest of appeals. How will you find people who share your priorities for social good? (Social media can help.) How will talk about your cause to help galvanize those who don't?

Like Robin Hood, you may find yourself bridging the worlds of your customers who use your services and your funders. Are you ready to translate?

3. Metrics for your success may be hard to come by

In the for-profit world, your accountant helps you know you've failed. Not so with nonprofits. There, your long-term success depends on slipperier metrics. Did literacy levels increase among at-risk kids in urban Houston? How many meals did you serve? And how do these short-term metrics connect with longer-value impact?

4. Solve problems, don't just create organizations

Folks like Dan Pallotta are concerned that nonprofits lack ambition for the big stuff. 

In the for-profit world, it takes a product that's 10 times better than the competition to persuade folks to give it a try. How can you be 10 times better at targeting potential donors? Or 10 times better at addressing your issue?

At the end of the day, is that ambitious enough?

Great recipes (zillions of them) -- and in-app advertising done right.

Back in the web 1.0 days, Conde Nast put all of the recipes from Gourmet and its other food magazines online at http://epicurious.com. The recipes were searchable and over time Epicurious added ratings and other community features.

It's been a fabulous resource for cooks. They are great recipes, and there are lots of them -- including the 1955 recipe for steak au poivre that keeps me from going vegetarian.

Epicurious has now come to the iPhone with the free "Epicurious recipies and shopping list" app http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=312101965&mt=8 .

That whole recipe database is now searchable from your iPhone. And, yes, it will make a grocery list from the recipes you pick.

• search the entire Epicurious recipe database -- from the phone 
• see how other Epicurious users have rated the recipes 
• save favorite recipes 
• generate a shopping list from the recipes you pick 
• check off items as you buy them 
• price: free 

But how do they pay for that? The app is ad-supported, but in the least-intrusive way I've seen in an app. Here's how it works --

A search tells you how many results were found (see the second screenshot below). If you click to see the results, the app then splashes an ad while it retrieves the recipes (third screenshot). The experience feels perfectly natural. "Oh," I thought, "I'm waiting anyway, may as well view an ad."

Woah! This is completely different than, say, the New York Times approach -- where the splash ad get between you and content you may not want anyway.

What's the difference? With Epicurious, I've seen enough to know I want to go on, so an ad is okay with me. Search confirms my intent.

The Times, though is a browsing operation. From a headline I don't often know if the story will be what I want -- or worth sitting through an ad.

For me, the result of the experience is annoyance or, for Epicurious, gratitiude.

Can you afford to annoy your users?

         

Gentle Reader --

What, you may have wondered, is all this about nonprofits and social media yadda yadda doing on "The camera part of Code, Camera, Action"?

I got carried away. Posterous made me do it, with its seductive bookmarklet and beefy media handling.

What I'd intended to be a couple of photos a week turned into a couple of clips a day. I was hooked.

Posterous made it so easy (I'd say brainless, but I'll let you be the judge of that) to post stuff related to my other passion. That's helping nonprofits spark change using online tools. Code, Camera and Action got all mixed up.

Anyway, last night, I split them.

http://elstudio.us will continue to do Camera. Only -- both photo tools and storytelling.

http://el-studio.com takes over Code and Action. That's nonprofit and social media posts, and how this web business can make change. Plus code.

So thanks for reading. Sorry to rearrange the furniture on you. More comfy now?

My name is Eric, and I'm a postoholic.

Update: On the other hand, what's a photo or two between friends...

Those code and nonprofit social media posts looked so, well, text-y without the occasional photos interspersed.

And then, putting together the weekend's post, I had to think about just which blog to post to. A small thing, I know, but it was friction. 

So I put 'em back together. And I'll keep on one big unified lifestream. 

• http://elstudio.us - All the posts, on Code, Camera and Action. Longer content is tagged post. Photography stuff is tagged camera. Tech stuff is code.
• http://el-studio.com - All posts from that blog have been moved over here, and the blog redirects to elstudio.us. 

Code, Camera, Action together here -- as in life.

Eric Ries on the power of online communities --

Collectively, an online community has an unlimited amount of time to spend. Even if you and your community managers are a hundred times smarter and more productive than the members of your community, there is absolutely no way that you can keep up with its sheer volume of energy. So you can’t fight an online community and hope to win the argument. The only way to have your point of view prevail is to have members of the community invest their unlimited time and energy in evangelizing it. And that’s what really, truly, actively listening does.

via startuplessonslearned.com

This is what your nonprofit stands to gain from social media.

Of course, as Eric's post makes clear, the active listening needed to keep on the good side of this power ain't easy...

One of the most popular questions nonprofits ask our Giving Gurus is "Where's the money in social media?" (Sometimes folks say ROI, but they usually mean fundraising.)

Debra Askanase (@askdebra) has a great post on that today. For Debra, the important question isn't can a nonprofit fundraise on Twitter, but when does engagement turn into donations. Engagement is precursor.

If you are going to commit time and energy to social media, pick one or two platforms that make sense for your organization and act as if you want to meet people and learn from them. They want to talk to you, and you should want to listen to them. That’s why your fans and followers online are following your organization, after all. So talk. Yes, publish your newsy updates, but ask questions and listen…learn…engage…and respond.

Only then, relationship in place, does it make sense to talk about money.

Sound familiar? It's probably not too different from how you cultivate major donors today. Only online, without the lunches.

Social media has a couple of benefits.  It's online, so more of your staff can join in. And by listening, you get to hear directly from your customers.

This isn't as scairy as it sounds. After all, you're asking your people to talk about a cause they love, with people who range from curious to interested to even committed like you.

You may find that you wind up with gifts more valuable than donations: volunteers, evangelists, fundraisers. Friends, after all, are priceless.

In the lean startup, product and management team build quickly, then iterate based on statistics gathered from real users (that's Eric Ries's excellent description below). When Seth Godin gripes about lack of vim in the nonprofit sector, this is the approach he's missing.

Why does it seem so rare in the social sector?

In parallel to this work by the “solution team” (engineering, ops and QA) there is a new kind of “problem team” (what we used to call business development, marketing, and sales) that is asking the bigger questions, such as: Who will our customers be? What problem does our product solve for them? How many of them are there? And how will we reach them?

via gigaom.com

Chris Dixon on the revenue situation between Google and the newspapers:

Newspapers, like all websites, are suppliers of content to Google.  In most markets, with genuinely competitive buyers and suppliers, the revenues are shared between buyers and suppliers in proportion to their relative bargaining power.  Their bargaining power depends on how fragmented each side of the market is – how many genuine alternatives each company has.