socially marketing

A few days ago I participated in a conference with the ambitious title Brain Trust for Online Capacity Mapping and Resource Matching for Nonprofits, Philanthropies, and Communities.

There were about 40-50 participants, hosted by my friend Deborah Elizabeth Finn (aka The CyberYenta, for her uncanny knack for nonprofit professional match-making )

Offcially, the conference took place in Boston, but its locale was hard to pin down since most participants (including myself, and even some presenters) were attending remotely.

There were a few things about this hybrid physical-web attendance I found interesting, but before going into the conference format, a quick summary of content: three organizations presenting innovative web-based resources for the nonprofit community and its supporters:

1. Social Actions: gathers and disseminates an open database of actions that anyone, anywhere, can take right now to make a difference [ link:http://socialactions.com/ ]
2. NPO Connect:  facilitates skill transfer between professionals in the non-profit sector by allowing professionals to connect with one another through a web-based platform [ link: http://mnn.npoconnect.org/ ]
3. Massachusetts Nonprofit Database:  Compiles a multi-dimensional database of nonprofits in Massachusetts, which can serve as a model for other states [ link: http://massnonprofits.clinc.us/Default.aspx ]

Attending via the web is definitely not the same as being there, but it’s not quite as simple as saying it’s the next best thing.

Advantages included live simultanous chat, real-time surfing to related sites, and the myriad conveniences afforded by being in your own office or home - including the option of not wearing pants (for the record, I did.)  There were some technical hiccups, but once underway it was a pretty seamless experience, and I was glad I was “there”.

I’m always intrigued by the economics of things, so my final thought is on the total costs of provding both audio and video access: zero.

In this case, the conference call audio was hosted by FreeConferenceCall [link: http://www.freeconferencecall.com ] and video by dimdim [link: http://www.dimdim.com/ ] - two of many free remote meeting services.

I don’t know if the business model of these “free” hosting services is good, ethical, or most importantly, sustainable (see Free Conference Call’s explanation/defense here: http://www.freeconference.com/blockingfaq_press.aspx ) - but I do know that it’s a useful tool for a sector that can use all the free help it can get.

When pondering these conferences’ ROI - social or otherwise - an I at or near zero makes for some impressive Rs.

Well, both Interesting NY and SoCap08 are behind us now, and I am happy to report that both conferences were phenomenal successes - in general, and especially for socialmarkets!

The Interesting NY conference definitely lived up to its name.  The topics were all over the place, and the speakers had all kinds of backgrounds, but the end product was a full day of genuinely interesting presentations.  Since this was a general audience, our presentation was socialmarkets 101 - including a primer defining the “social capital markets”.

This was not necessary at the later conference with that exact name: “Social Capital Markets - 2008″.  Naturally, this crowd was already up the social capital learning curve, so we were able to get much deeper into the belly of the socialmarkets beast.

We had the luxury of a full hour of conference time to ourselves, and made the most of it.  The SoCap peeps were pushing hard to make this conference an interactive experience instead of just a lecture, so we left plenty of time for audience participation.

Here’s a pic of me speaking at SoCap… Allan is behind the camera:

Me addressing my fellow social capitalists

We spent about half the time explaining the whys, whats and hows of socialmarkets, and then opened up the floor for Q&A.  I was actually a little nervous about this part, since you never know if people are going to be interested enough to join the conversation (especially since we were the last talk before the lunch break…)

Turns out there was nothing to worry about.  The Q&A turned into an energetic discussion of social markets and the metrics which drive it (e.g. SROI) and for most of the time we did little more than referee!

That conversation spilled over into lunch, dinner, the rest of the conference, and in fact are still going on now - over one week and 3,000 miles later.  We learned a lot in these discussions, and perhaps even more importantly, made a lot of critical contacts with others in the social capital space.

I’ll save the details on the long-term impacts of SoCap08 for another post.  For now, I’ll just say that socialmarkets made not just new friends, but new strategic partners there.  I think these relationships will help see not just our venture succeed, but also the complementary ventures that will form the ecosystem to support the entire social capital marketplace.

socialmarkets.org is a Web project by Allan Benamer and Jeff Tuller designed to create a social capital market that will more effectively link together donor capital with nonprofit projects and case listings. Think of it as a NYSE for the nonprofit sector. Yes, we understand that that’s a controversial notion, but we believe that it has merit regardless of the excesses and market failures we’ve seen. We are looking for a better and more fundamentally open and transparent way to fund projects and case listings at nonprofits. We believe that a simple market based on concepts such as “social return on investment”, “user generated content”, “social networking” and “open APIs” can address issues of accountability and transparency so often harped upon in the mainstream press. And it can more clearly link what nonprofits do and what they’re funded for in a way never before imaginable.

Reach out to us, talk to us, we want to engage with all the stakeholders in our sector: philanthropists, nonprofits, and technologists. We are in this for the long haul and we’re not going away. A limited set of wireframes for our project is available upon request.