Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

More than 1 million users. Sixteen billion monthly page views. Ninety-nine percent user engagement.

If these sound like stats from tech companies, you’re right. Except these tech companies are nonprofits.

In Steve Case’s new book, The Third Wave, he argues that this next generation of the Internet will transform major industry sectors and become integrated into everything we do. We are already seeing the tremendous impact of software and the Internet transform one of the least discussed areas — the nonprofit sector.

With the growing ubiquity of mobile phones and the Internet, combined with plummeting connectivity costs and, in some cases, free infrastructure, it’s not surprising that organizations focused on scaling impact are integrating technology into the core of their solution. But you may be surprised to hear how deep technology’s impact has already been on the nonprofit sector....

Using digital technology to tell stories can help charities with impact assessment, says Kieron Kirkland...

Using stories to evaluate results? Quantitatively??!! You bet!!

Here is a fabulous article after my quantitative heart.

The author Kieron Kirkland talks about how the organization, Nominet Trust, worked with the org story company Cognitive Edge to capture stories and then have the story authors rank what their stories are about on a scale.

Once the story was captured, there were several types of scales the storytellers ranked their stories on -- generating big data!

See -- storytelling and evaluation can be done effectively if constructed properly.

This article goes hand-in-hand with newer qualitative evaluation processes for arts-based techniques (like storytelling) talked about in one of my favorite books, Method Meets Art; Arts-Based Research Practice by Patricia Leavy (2009).

If you struggle to connect stories about your projects to quantifiable results, then run to read this article. 

Having helped organizations articulate measures so they can see progress, the first critical area to tackle are which measures are going to be used that are the most meaningful, given the project's objectives. 

This article will give you several ideas for how to get started.

Enjoy!

This review was written by Karen Dietz for her curated content on business storytelling at www.scoop.it/t/just-story-it ;

[A must-read for storytellers who need an ROI ~ Jeff]

You’d think that a problem makes for an interesting story. But when it comes to telling the story of game-changing innovation, the “problem/solution” model is broken. This is why so many brands and causes have a hard time telling their story. When it comes to business, you want to introduce a paradox, not just a problem.

What a great post from colleage Michael Margolis on how to re-think the problem/resolution elements of a story into presenting the possbility & then the obstacle being faced.

This is an especially important insight for nonprofits to get because the problem/resolution set up starts out with a negative -- which can be a turn-off for people. As Michale says, we are surrounded by enough problems these days.

So turn the problem/resolution dyamic on its head and shift to presenting the possibility/obstacle dynamic instead.  That way you are leading with a positive, and then presenting the obstacle to overcome. Obviously then people's participation in the cause/business will help the obstacle be overcome. Or part of the obstacle has already been overcome with people's help.

Now, I would suggest doing the same for any business -- present the possibility and the obstacle, and then the resolution or call to action.

I be you'll feel better setting up your story this way, and so will your audience. Let me know how it goes!

Cause based marketing is the biggest trend in the industry. The influence of Millennials is growing and attention spans are shortening, and leveraging socially positive causes has become one of the key methods for brands to be seen as benevolent, hip and relevant.

However, it’s not as simple as attaching a dollar figure to a cause, and it doesn’t matter if you wrap a bad campaign in a good cause, it’s still a bad campaign, which in the end will be more damaging to your brand. With this in mind, here are some of the best and worst examples of recent cause-based campaigns, as well as some key insights on what to do and what to avoid....

Eventually, every celebrity and politician (though hopefully not every brand) will have taken the Ice Bucket Challenge.

So, what next? The moment the ALS campaign went crazy, we braced for the inevitable slew of copycats.

Adweek takes a look at some of the contenders....

I have a short attention span, but I rock at multitasking. I may get bored easy but if you capture my attention, I could become your number one advocate. Please just cut to the chase, there’s no need for lengthy instructions; to me a picture’s worth a thousand words. At about 80 million strong, by 2017 these Americans, born between 1980-2000, will have more spending power than any other generationbefore us. You call me a millennial, but I prefer Rachael....

What does this mean for non-profits? If you figure out the secret sauce to reaching us now, not only will you execute better fundraising campaigns, but you increase your chances of creating lifelong donors.

Here are 5 things you need to start doing if you want to captivate my fellow millennials...