Outside Looking In - 6 Exercises for Finding Common Ground in Diverse Groups

A fundraising colleague, Dave Tinker, CFRE was asked to lead an educational session for refugee teens primarily from Nepal, Bhutan, and the Middle East to introduce them to fundraising as a profession.

He asked the #AFPeeps, an Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) volunteer Social Media group for recommendations for activities he could do with the refugee teens. I was excited about his project because it reminded me how often I work with groups that I am not, nor will ever truly be a part of. Alice Ferris, ACFRE and I have and continue to work with numerous culturally diverse groups; Native American, Latino, Rural, African American, Afghans, Iranians, and others. We find some of our greatest satisfaction working with people from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds.

I created the following list of suggestions for activities that I think can work for any group, but will be especially effective if working with a diverse group. I think they can build trust and relationships among participants while delivering insight about your audience that you can draw upon while presenting for both humor and education. 

ACTIVITY SUGGESTIONS:

1. "I Am, But I Am Not" (Defy stereotype exercise) Participants work in small groups to share what "other" people's stereotypes are of them, their culture or their country. They then share how they do not fit within those stereotypes. They report out to the group. This can be a verbal/written or drawn exercise.

2. "This is America?" (Cognitive dissonance exercise) Ask them to draw 2 things. What they thought America, Americans or other American students were going to be like and then to draw what they've learned "we" are really like. Goal: getting them to share their surprises and open up about their "American" experience.

3. "Good Heart, Bad Idea" (Critical thinking exercise) Ask them to draw or perform short skit about how they see people from other countries try to help through philanthropy in their home country but in ways that are misguided, clumsy or uninformed. Then ask them to provide solutions or advice for people who still want to help. This one will have to be delicately presented or they might be reluctant to share perceived criticisms.

4. "Sesame Street - One of these things is not like the other" (Breaking down barriers) Ask them to group themselves by different criteria; physical, demographic, geographic, cultural, religious, etc. They report out after each grouping about why/how they grouped themselves. The goal is to identify sub cultures that they share with "some" others but to finish the exercise where everyone is in the same group to identify that ultimately we all share some common culture regardless of resources, education or circumstances.

5. "The ONE Thing" (Self-awareness exercise) They work in small groups and explain to each other "The One Thing" they wish people understood about them, their country or their cultures that most people have a hard time comprehending. They report out why this is important to deeper understanding, trust and progress.

6. "Why Should I Care?" (Justify support exercise) Break them up in groups of 4-5. Try to mix them so they are with people they don't know. Provide a list of causes they can choose from. Make it about causes, not organizations. arts, education, health, social justice, animal protection, hunger abatement, clean water, etc. Do a random drawing after the groups are established to determine which group gets to pick their cause first from the list you create as a flip chart exercise. This will generate initial excitement and disappointment. Every person gets $100 in play money and 1 week of "virtual" volunteer time to give to a cause. They can give both to one cause or cash to one, time to other. Report out the winning cause and "You" make an actual $100 donation to a local cause in your group's name.

Regardless of the exercise you choose. At the end I encourage "You" to make a contribution to a cause that your group chooses and have them participate by signing a card that will accompany that gift. 

Be sure to provide a signup sheet and send contact information about how the participants can become more involved with causes they want to support either financially or through volunteer work.

Good luck! And have fun learning while you teach!

######

Connect with GoalBusters     

Jim Anderson, CFRE      GoalBustersJim

Alice Ferris, ACFRE, CFRE, MBS      alice.ferris

You are a Person NOT a Company - "BAD LinkedIn Connection Requests"

I NEVER accept a Facebook friend request or a LinkedIn invitation to connect from a company. DUH! You are not a company. You are a person that incorrectly set up your LinkedIn profile. 

Please feel free to copy and paste my standard response below as a reply email to anyone who sends you an email to become friends on Facebook with or connect on LinkedIn with their "Locksmithing Company" or "Real Estate Agency." It's written for LinkedIn, but minor edits will make it apply to most social media platforms.

-----

Hello, I received an invitation to "connect" with your business. Your have incorrectly set up your LinkedIn profile. Businesses can't have personal LinkedIn "connections." Businesses should create company or organization "pages" and you as an owner should have a personal profile where you are identified as an individual, by role at the company and THEN you can invite others to connect with you personally and/or "follow" your company. Your profile isn't a person's profile it is currently set up as basically a Yellow Pages ad. Businesses who set pages up as "people" either don't understand Linkedin's policies, or worse are purposefully attempting to use LinkedIn as a direct mail/spam marketing device. LinkedIn is designed to be a networking tool for people, NOT a solicitation tool for companies. If you want to connect as a person, please send me another invitation from a person's profile.

Also, some companies and individuals send bulk direct messages to their contracts. If they are sending unsolicited marketing or sales offers, they are spamming their contacts and they are violating anti-spam laws, they are in violation of LinkedIn's Terms of Service and they are abusing their relationships with their contacts. There are staff members of a Northern Arizona radio station that are notorious for this egregious spamming practice. I hope this is not one of your practices.

Good luck with your business.

-----

Feel free to edit the above message to fit your circumstances and degree of annoyance.

Marketing With Facebook Photos

I often see organizations and individuals "repost" their existing Facebook photos duplicating the photos. This is unnecessary and ineffective unless you're reusing an existing photo as a Cover Photo or Profile Picture in which case duplication is unavoidable. However, if the goal is to "borrow" content from the past to add current visual content to a post today, there are few more efficient/effective ways to do that. 

 

The ultimate goal with Facebook is to increase engagement with audience. A person can't be engaged if they don't see your post and they won't see your post unless it shows up in their Facebook News Feed. How likely something is to show up on a person's News Feed is determined by "Facebook's feed prioritization algorithm" formally called "EdgeRank."  This algorithm determines which posts show up on in a user's news feed, how high in that feed and for how long.  Facebook execs claim there are as many as 100,000 variables that produce the News Feed. The three original EdgeRank elements, Affinity, Weight and Time Decay are still  part of the evaluation and interactions (likes, shares, comments) are very important.

If you repost an existing image or video as a new timeline update as opposed to sharing it from it's existing/previous location, you LOSE ALL previous interactions, meaning that new posts starts from "zero." If you do not want "waste" prior engagement and interactions there are a few more efficient ways to use existing content.

1. Share a link to an existing photo album. It will generate a post that looks identical to an original "new" post. AND it retains ALL captions, links, photo credits AND MOST IMPORTANTLY...it retains all the engagements...likes, comments, shares, etc. Those "engagements" are gold in increasing the post's rankings in Facebook's prioritization system. You can use Facebook's "share" feature or share the link by copying and pasting the url for the album.

2. Share a specific photo from an existing Facebook album. This allows you a wealth of photos you can post as you work to generate buzz for specific recurring events or ongoing topics while retaining all the engagements as mentioned above. It will navigate the user to the specific photo within the album and they can explore the album and your Facebook page from there, all while building your overall engagement. You can use Facebook's "share" feature or share the link by copying and pasting the url for the photo. 

3. Add new photos to an existing album. When you add photos to an existing album, the photos appear as a new post on your timeline and are a part of the existing album so viewers might explore previously posted photos. Also, when you add photos to an existing album that album "jumps" up to the top of the list of your photo albums because it has been edited with new content. 

TIPS FOR MARKETING WITH FACEBOOK PHOTOS

 

Improve Engagement When posting photos to Facebook that are suitable to create an album, ALWAYS try to post 4 or more photos. An MTV comparative test demonstrated that posting 4 or more photos generated 1200% more clicks than a single photo posted. To create ongoing interest and engagement you might choose to post 4 or more photos from an event over a period of days creating serial storytelling experience.

Be Strategic. Select your album's Cover Photo carefully. And think about how you organize your photos within the album to place the most dynamic photos first in the album to generate interest, even if that means putting some photos out of chronological order. You can always go back and rearrange the photos to be chronological later if that's important.

Tag People. When you tag someone, you often draw attention to your event or organization from people that are completely unaware of you. But don't over do it. Only post flattering photos and only tag a person in a few photos within a given album. Group photos are a great way to get a conversation started. Tag a few people and they or their friends will tag others.

Honor Privacy If you want to make someone aware of a photo but don't want to leave the tag "public," tag them and then immediately remove the tag. They'll get a notification, but it won't show up in other people's News Feed. 

Tell Stories and Provide Information. Always add captions, links and photo credits to your photos. Your goal is to create visual storytelling with your photos and your captions and links provide information and entertainment for your viewers while delivering "thank you" value to the people and organizations in the photos. It's just common courtesy.

Give Credit Where Credit Is Due. If you are posting someone else's photo, be sure to ALWAYS give them credit. When possible post a link back to a website, blog, or social media site that they would want promoted.

Photos can be your most effective posts in creating social engagement, I hope some of these tips help you better engage your communities.

Here are some additional training resources.

Fundraising Success:  Creating Your 'Virtual Porch'

Advancing Philanthropy:  Social Media - You’re Not Herding Sheep, You’re Tending a Garden

ONLINE Prezi Training by GoalBusters, LLC Plug In! Social Media for NonProfits

######

Connect with GoalBusters     
Jim Anderson      GoalBustersJim

Alice Ferris      alice.ferris

100 Days of Gratitude, Day 32: Gratitude is Contagious

We've finished the first 30 days of our 100 Days of Gratitude! It's time for some reflections on our experiences so far.

1. People still like the personal touch.
We could have done this all a lot quicker by sending emails to people or posting something on their Facebook wall, but we have purposefully selected sending handwritten notes, making phone calls, and seeing people in person. Electronic media is great for a lot of things, but when you want to communicate a personal connection and real human interaction, you still kind of need to do something else.

2. There is never a shortage of people to thank.
When Jim and I travel (which most people know is a lot), we discuss our projects. (Sometimes I wonder what we'd talk about if we weren't business colleagues!) Lately, our conversations go like this:

Jim: Did you see I'm having dinner with Paul?
Alice: Yes. Oh, and that reminds me, we're having lunch with Elta.
Jim: Great. We haven't seen her in a long time. Oh, I have to call _____.
Alice: Oh yeah, and that reminds me, I need to add _____ to the list. Let me text myself.
Jim: Did you add _____?
Alice: Oops, no. I'll do that too.
Jim: Oh, and we're behind on the blog.

You get the idea. The list continues to grow the more people we thank. That's not a bad feeling!

3. Gratitude is contagious.
After sending thank you notes to several people, I got thank you notes back! We've also been encouraged by the number of people who have also decided to embark on their own 100 days of gratitude. A little bit of time that it takes to thank someone can start a cascade of gratitude.

(I'm reminded of the old Liberty Mutual ad campaign: "Doing the Right Thing.")


via AdWorld

Whether it's been people who impacted our personal lives, professional careers, or have donated to our causes, it has been the highlight of the month to thank them for their contributions. As we continue the 100 Days of Gratitude, we welcome your comments on your own gratitude experiences on this blog, or on our Facebook page.

Thank YOU!

100 Days of Gratitude

Have you said "Thank you" to someone today?

whatwillmatter.com

One of our more popular presentations recently has been Development from the Donor's Point of View. In it, we talk about how our fundraising systems, lingo and metrics sometimes get in the way of developing connections and relationships with our donors. At the end of the session, we ask our participants to schedule two appointments...just two...to talk with a donor and thank them for their support.

This got me thinking.

What if I connected with someone every day and talked with them about their positive impact?

This could mean...

• Calling or sending a note to a donor telling them how much their support has meant to my organization
• Giving a small gift card to a support staff person who has made life better
• Contacting a friend or family member just to thank them for believing in me or being there when I needed them
• Reaching out to someone who seems to need a mental or spiritual boost.

Then I started thinking bigger. What if I made a pledge to express my gratitude to someone every day for the next month? Then Jim pushed me bigger: "100 days is a good number." (Always asking for more, that Jim.)

So here it is. Starting June 1, the GoalBusters "100 Days of Gratitude" challenge. 

I pledge to post a short blog and Facebook post each day starting June 1 about how I expressed my gratitude and what happened. (Names may be changed if necessary, but the overall story will remain.) Like our Facebook page if you'd rather interact there. 

Feel free to join in the challenge too! Comment on our blog or Facebook post with your own experiences. 

And THANKS.

PS: My warm up activity today was to send compliment emails to US Airways about an exceptional flight attendant, Tim, and a really sweet US Airways Club agent (in Charlotte), Shellee. I hope they actually get the emails!

######

Connect with GoalBusters     

Alice Ferris, ACFRE      alice.ferris
Jim Anderson      GoalBustersJim