Move on up! And give yourself a leg up the career ladder!
A step-by-step guide to getting the attention you deserve for your accomplishments and expertise.

Thursday May 26th
Start Time: 1:00 PM End Time: 2:30 PM (Eastern Standard Time)

Only $49.99

Webinar Description
What can you do to move on up and take control of your career? Well, if you’re not just there to do a job and go home, if you actually care about how far and how fast you rise in your field, then this webinar is for you. What can you do to make yourself irresistible to employers? What does your online presence tell potential employers about you?

According to MyWebCareer.com, a survey of employers revealed:

* 70% have rejected candidates based on reputational data found online.
* 75% have hiring policies that require the review of online reputational data.
* 84% believe the use of online reputational data will increase in the next 5 years.

This means, like it or not, people will judge you by what they find online about you. So why not manage your online reputation now, before you are even looking for a job?

Get Your Questions Answered:
In order to effectively answer the questions of the participants, this interactive webinar is limited to 35 people. There is also a question-and-answer session at the end of the webinar.

Webinar Outline:
During this 90 minute webinar, in an easy-to-follow process, we’ll cover how to go from nobody to shiny person that everyone wants. We’ll answer all of these questions and more:

Learn:
1. How do you start from nothing?
2. How to control what people find out about you online?
3. What are the ways you can get known online?
4. What are ways to identify and reach influencers on Twitter in your niche?
5. How do you get recognition for your accomplishments?
6. What is the best way to build an audience?
7. How do you make money on the side with what you already know?
8. How much of yourself should you reveal online?
9. How can you dominate LinkedIn and really work your profile?

NEW! The following bonus materials are included with this webinar:
1. A blogging calendar that you can use to automate your posting
2. An automation plan for your social networks, so you only spend 15 minutes a day building your reputation.
3. A process tree diagram for tried and true ways to drive traffic to your site every day

Click the link below to sign up.

What the people say

“I found Mazarine’s presentation not only helpful but fun. It was a great way to understand more about getting a job and moving up in the nonprofit sector. As a fundraiser I think it was especially helpful.” -Karen Gilbert

“Mazarine was amazingly insightful and helpful in showing us how to develop a web presence to help our job searches. Her knowledge and humor make her presentations both thought-provoking and conversational. Thank you Mazarine!”

MOVE ON UP!

Are you new here? Welcome! Sign up for my newsletter and get fresh nonprofit fundraising, management and career ideas monthly!

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May 26th Webinar: Move on up! And give yourself a leg up the career ladder! originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on May 12, 2011.

“Hey Twitter, can you help me out? I am looking for small rural clinics and hospitals using social media.”

The response was instant and tremendous, because @TweetSmarter picked up my question and retweeted it to others.

Over fifty people, complete strangers, responded, and some of their answers are below.

People’s responses ranged from retweeting my question to asking me to tell them what I found out, as well as providing some extremely helpful answers.

TweetSmarter ROCKS!

TweetSmarter is so incredible!

I was so touched! Total strangers, helping me out, simply because I asked for help!

What did I get out of this?
I got lots of different links to different hospitals and clinics, I got smarter around how to ask this question, I started to create relationships with new people, and got new followers too!

If you have a question that you’d like answered, and you want to connect with people on Twitter too, I suggest that you ask a question, and ask @TweetSmarter to retweet it. You might work for a nonprofit that cares about domestic violence, for example. And you might want to ask, “How are other domestic violence agencies doing social media? What are some policies I can follow?”

If you work at a hospital, how are you doing social media?

Do you have a facebook page for your hospital?

Do you have a twitter account?

Do you have a blog?

I have so many resources now pertaining to hospitals and social media! Here are some of the first links!
Ed Bennett’s comprehensive list
How doctors use twitter to help people follow a live surgery.
A big hospital social media resource list

Here are some people on Twitter who know more about this!
@Concentrahealth
@MissionAVL
@Doctor_V
@CorvallisClinic
@RMHCFamily
@EdBennett
@MatthewBrowning
@MDelaCalzada
@SimTara

And MORE! More people responded! But there were so many, I don’t have time to write them all.

If you responded, please feel free to write a comment below, or just tell me more about what your hospital is doing, and how it is going for you!

Thank you!

Do you work for a nonprofit hospital? How are you doing social media? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on April 28, 2011.

In 2011, what new web/mobile technologies or tactics will help organizations and enterprises create/increase social impact? How will changes in nonprofit technology shift the way we serve our communities?

Here is what I think, and then, I want to hear what YOU think!

I think our web tactics in 2011 are going to have to give us 3 things.

1. Transparency. Our donors are demanding more and more transparency. Where does the money go? Why does it go there? What is our REAL impact? And I think that last one is the most important. You can show your impact with an interactive dashboard, from number of case manager visits to number of members you have at your membership organization. You can also show where the money goes, from the Kilowatt hours to building rent. It’s fairly easy, with an initial investment, to set up a transparency dashboard similar to IMAMUSEUM, and if you want one for your nonprofit, may I recommend this web firm? Reasonable rates, and sterling results. Want proof? Look at this website. All done by Steve Havelka. Also, my new website. When you SHOW transparency, you WILL get more donations. People like to see your true, realtime impact, and that is actually easy to automate.

2. Community Our new web technologies in 2011 are going to help us build community faster. Emails are opened maybe 25% of the time, Direct Mail has a well-known 4% response rate, but text messages are opened 85% of the time. Even if you are very small, you CAN take advantage of this resource.

I think whether we are social service charities or arts nonprofits, we need to think about building community not just among our donors, but among our clients, students, and others who use our services. How will we do this? Why not a number to text if you’re stranded and need to be picked up? Or a way to broadcast text all clients with closure news for your agency on a snow day?

And what about your community of donors? Can you start a mobile giving/petition campaign? If money is the barrier, how about coming together in community with sister nonprofits in your city to ask for mobile donations together in a month or during a week that is about your issue? (Sexual Assault Month, Domestic Violence Month, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, etc).

I think 2011 is about recovering from this downturn through weaving our networks EVEN CLOSER. It’s about building community with your clients, donors, and your natural community organizational partners, to lift the entire community and make less work for the one-person shop.

Can you start, right now, to think of 3 people who have a similar job to you in your city, who you could meet for coffee and plan a mobile giving campaign with? If you pool your resources, you can all reap the rewards!

3. Cultivation Whether your nonprofit is on Twitter, Facebook, or is just starting the journey towards engaging donors online, there are cheap or FREE ways to thank donors just for being there for you. People say you should communicate at least 5 times before you ask for money, and now Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Hootsuite all make this easy for you.

What I mean by this is, you can thank donors via text, via @messages on twitter, or just by name on Twitter, on your Facebook page, on LinkedIn, and on your website too.

For example, @DCShoutOuts will tweet who gave to their organization, and the reason they gave, on their twitter stream. Your donors can look for and find their own names on there, even if they don’t have a twitter account, if you have a Twitter widget in the sidebar of your website showing your tweets. So the only way this really costs you money is in your time.

Imagine this.

You’re a donor, but you haven’t gotten a thank you letter in two weeks! You wonder if they even got your donation. Then, you give to another nonprofit, and you see your name on the nonprofit website, in a thank you letter that they mail to you, in their LinkedIn group, and on their Facebook page. Do you feel thanked? I think I would!

In short, in 2011 I think we’ll see a lot more nonprofits coming together in community to do mobile donations, and taking advantage of cheap or free ways to help deliver services, grow donor loyalty and extend their reach.

What do YOU think?

What are YOUR predictions?

Also, follow @WildWomanFund on twitter! Why? Because you <3 snappy & amusing Tweets!

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What are YOUR Nonprofit Tech Predictions for 2011? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on January 20, 2011.

It’s like the best library in the world about everything you want to read and it’s always adding new books and it NEVER STOPS! I mean, talk about double-edged sword!

Since a lot more people are jumping on the blogging bandwagon every day, and also, Twitter, and also, Tumblr and a whole bunch of other places, the level of noise is going to keep rising. So how do you find the gems in the trash?

RSS.

Do you know what RSS is? RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.

I have a page where I keep all of my RSS feeds. It’s here. You can see what I’m looking at.

Why should you use RSS feeds?

Because

0. Instead of having to remember 100 websites where you want to find things, you can have just one place to go.

1. You can use it to keep track of things you’re looking for on craigslist or Amazon, (whether it’s a job, free wood, an appliance, whatever you want)

2. You can look for jobs with it, and never miss another job posting. Indeed.com is your friend here.

3. You can find funny jokes with it. Lately, what’s really been making me laugh is TigerBeatdown.com

4. You can keep up with industry news and blogs.

5. You can find new things to blog about for your nonprofit or business.

6. You can check your email with it.

7. You can use it to track when and where people are talking about you, or your nonprofit.

8. You can use it to aggregate people talking about your cause or keywords on your website.

9. You can have twitter mention alerts when people write your keyword, helping you find new people to follow and converse with.

10. You can narrow the internet down into a more manageable place.

How do you start?
If you’ve never used RSS before, don’t worry. Netvibes.com makes it easy.

Just go there, set up your account, and start with the green plus button on the top left. You can add a feed there.

Where do you find a feed?
All sorts of places.
Every google search you do can be turned into a feed. Also, craigslist searches. Also, many websites.
You can see if a website has a feed by going to the address bar and finding the orange box in the top right corner. If you click it, you will be taken to the feed address.

Once you’re there, copy what’s in the address bar, and paste this into the section of Netvibes where it says Add a feed.

Now it will give you a little widget. Drag and drop that sucker right into your tabs.

Now name your tabs useful things, like “My jobs” or “NP Tech” or “Things that make me laugh.”

Every time you go to check your netvibes page, make SURE you go to the laugh section first. This will train your brain to associate a fun activity with checking your feeds.

Questions? Comments? Do you already read this blog in your feed reader? If so, how is that experience for you?

10 reasons you should be using RSS RIGHT NOW originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on December 7, 2010.

Brian Massey, The Conversion Scientist

First off, who is Brian Massey and why should you care?

Brian Massey was recommended to me by my good friend Vicki Flaugher. When she makes recommendations, I listen, so I started to research Brian. He runs a consulting business called “The Conversion Scientist.” What this means is that he helps people buy your products or services.

The way this relates to you and your nonprofit is that we can easily apply these principles to getting people to donate to your cause.

I scheduled a phone call with him last week, and he gave me lots of good ideas on how to get more people interested in what I’m doing, and help them buy.

You, as a nonprofit marketer, are in the unique position of being able to address a larger social issue, and then boil it down to how your nonprofit helps, and then parse it down even more specifically into how a donor can take action to help you.

You go from ‘BIG SOCIAL PROBLEM’

to ‘WHAT WE DO’

to ‘NOW YOU CAN DO SOMETHING TOO.’

You are solving the problem that they have, and if the donor likes what you’re doing, they are primed to give to you.

Here are two things that I learned from Brian Massey.

1. Your front page design needs to make it easy to see what you do.

How easy are you making it to buy? What is a pain point?

Now here’s how I’m going to break it down for you.

Have you ever gone through the donation process on your own website? Have you watched someone else do it?

How easy are you making it to give?

Is your donate button above the fold? (The fold is where the screen cuts off the rest of your website, when someone first comes to your website.)

Is it clear what your nonprofit does, how transparent you are, and how the problem gets solved, all above the fold?

Can people sign up for your newsletter above the fold?

Can people find you on Twitter and other social networks above the fold?

Do you have social proof, above the fold, that lots of people are supporting what you do?

(If you answered yes to ALL of the above, you’re in good shape, really, tell ME what to do sometime!)

It may be impossible to put ALL of this above the fold, but you can prioritize which ones you’d like to emphasize, and make sure they’re SOMEWHERE on your front page.

2. Are you optimizing your donate page?

When it comes to donating, what’s on your donate page?

Is it JUST a form for their credit card information?

Shame shame!

What if they want to do a monthly gift?

What if they are interested in bequests?

What if they want to make a request for your nonprofit to come and speak to their social group?

What if they want to learn more about corporate giving?

What if they want to have their donation deducted from their paycheck?

What if they want to donate AND volunteer?

What if they want to give in-kind donations to your nonprofit?

What if they want to blog about your nonprofit after giving?

What if they want to organize an event for your nonprofit?

What if they want to set up their own donation page on your website and direct their friends and family there?

Do you see now how you could be leaving more than money on the table, but other opportunities to engage with this donor?

You could easily put checkboxes on your site where people could sign up to do MORE for your organization.

Here are some articles Brian Massey’s written. You can apply these to your nonprofit. If you need some support with that, I am available to help your nonprofit.

Making your e-newsletter

Making a landing page

Measuring your social media return

Reading your web stats and making sense of them

Helping set up a place to experiment and make mistakes

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What you can learn from Brian Massey about using social media to get donations originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on November 4, 2010.

As someone who fundraises for a living, this may sound weird, but people actually want to fundraise for you, for free! They want to do a walk-a-thon, a bike-a-thon, or a bake-off. They want to touch the people they’re helping. They want to do more. The problem is, you don’t have time to supervise and help all of these people with every little idea that they have. You have grants to write! You have appeals to plan! You have major gifts to ask for!

How are you giving them ways to do more, and reasons to do more?
You need to invest in technology on your website, so that you can empower donors to fundraise. It’s an initial expense that will pay off. How?

What’s in this for you?
1.You will create a structure that will compel people to act, and make it easy for them to do so

2.You will start to have a pool of donors that will make their own fundraising events, with the need for minimal support from you

3.You make your programs more engaging and more REAL by highlighting real people, real situations, instead of just a holistic set of services.

4.You will have a place to send people when they ask, “What can I do?” It can link to volunteer opportunities, to a place where they can create their own event, and send their friends and family to donate, and a link to other ways to give or get involved.

George Stevens recently posted on R.E. Foundations, the Council on Foundation’s blog, about entrepreneurial donors. He wrote,

“…community foundations are a platform for the nonprofit ecosystem. Do we encourage donor innovation using our platform? Do we engage the entrepreneurial donors in our communities? To fail to do so is to be left behind in the recovery of the nonprofit sector.”

How can you get started making your donors into entrepreneurs?

Do what Kiva.org does.

Kiva.org

If you haven’t heard of Kiva, they do microloans, connecting one donor and one entrepreneur in a developing country, whether it’s in Azerbaijan or Vanatu.

What they do
You go to their website and you immediately see a picture of a person who needs help starting their business. Maybe they want to start a stall to sell shoes. Maybe they want to sell vegetables by the road to market in their town. Whatever it is, there’s always a monetary goal. The goal is something small, usually $25 to $1,000. That’s how little it takes to help people in developing countries.

A quick solution
So since your money goes a lot further in these countries than in your own country, you feel good. Here’s a problem, all it takes is $40 dollars to solve it, you put the money in, and problem solved. Now the person can pay back the loan slowly, over time, as they get more successful. Then you get your money back, and you can choose to keep it, or reinvest it in another entrepreneur.

Ways to make it even more meaningful
And you can even go see the person that you funded, and make a report back to Kiva, with pictures, a blog post, or a video! Talk about a meaningful “voluntourism” opportunity!

Focus on people, not programs
Kiva has taken donor engagement to a whole new level. Their transparency makes them successful. When I first saw what they were doing, I just thought, “HOW CAN I DO THIS FOR MY ORGANIZATION?” But I couldn’t get any buy-in from senior leadership about doing this. It’s a dilemna peculiar to nonprofits. We have individual programs, all of which need money, but often, we don’t focus on the people in the programs. And we should.

How to start
So to start to make your organization like Kiva’s, start with the stories of real people, or real animals, or real places. Put a number on how much you need to raise to keep offering services or ramp up services for a particular program. Talk with your program managers, directors, and other staff. Find compelling things to say about these stories. Then go to your website, and get a programmer to put a donation thermometer up next to pictures and stories. Keep adding more pictures and more stories. Wash, rinse, repeat. If you need a programmer to help you make your changing stories and donation thermometers, I recommend Steve Havelka. He is affordable, and gets the job done fast!

If you have a few more resources
Do what Mercycorps does.

MercyCorps and MPower

They have a button on their website called “MPOWER” where they educate people about four or five programs that need help, make a donation thermometer, and help people choose how they want to be involved. This page is where donors can fundraise for a cause, create their own donation page, and start to use their own ingenuity, as a volunteer, to fundraise.

If you only have five minutes
You can partner with The Extraordinaires, and provide microvolunteer opportunities through their website, or yours. Does some lawyer have 15 minutes to look over your legal document? Take advantage of that! Does a researcher have 1 hour to research grants for you? Jump on that opportunity!

Extraordinaires and MicroVolunteering!

If you want to set up donation and fundraising pages for your donors to become entrepreneurs, you can use Crowdrise.

Thanks for reading! Is there anything else that you can think of, that would be useful for people who want to engage donors to be entrepreneurs for their causes?

Please leave a comment!

Invest in Technology, and Empower Your Donors to Fundraise for You! originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on September 24, 2010.

He was so friendly! And did he connect me with resources? I should say so! And now I will give you the hookup.

Here are some events you should check out, if you are in Austin this summer.

Item!
The 501 Tech Club!
Meets 3rd Mondays in Austin!
Date: Monday, June 21st, 2010
Time: 5:30pm – 7:00pm
Location: Austin Free-Net in the DeWitty Ctr
2209 Rosewood Ave Austin, TX 78702

Item!
Nonprofit Bar Camp on August 21st!
If you don’t know what a Bar Camp is, it’s a free camp where you just come and present on a topic and if people want to attend they’ll sign up. So you know I’m going to be there presenting on fundraising and nonprofit management and nonprofit communication!

Item!
Austin Social Media Club!
Tuesday, June 15, 2010 from 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
@Bazaarvoice US/Corporate Headquarters
3900 N. Capital of TX Hwy. Suite 300 Austin, TX 78746

Their latest twitter post: “Time to check in for June 15th Meeting on Location-based Social with @IncSlinger & @Gowalla RSVP @ http://smcaustinjune2010.eventbrite.com/”

Item!
Nonprofit Film Fest!
July 29th to August 2nd!

Also, he’s going to come and speak at the Nonprofit Job Club on what it’s like to be a Founder and ED of a nonprofit, so stay tuned for details!

Follow me on Twitter! Because you like getting relevant updates about fundraising, marketing, and making a difference!

I want to know what you want. Because your opinions are important to me.
Please tell me. Takes 5 mins. Tops.

A Meeting of the Mind behind 501derful.com originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on June 12, 2010.

What’s next on the horizon for nonprofits fundraising online?

There’s a lot going on focused around the individuals or “free agents” in your community that want to fundraise or create campaigns that benefit your organization, but aren’t created by or carried out by your staff. Various platforms and services offer ways that people can fundraise for organizations in all kinds of ways (among the new tools are JustGiving’s new facebook application).

Mobile donations are always getting far more use and publicity after their use by American Red Cross and others in disaster response efforts.

These are two very different directions: the first requires organizations to prepare for communities to lead; the second is a more traditional approach to fundraising, but using a different mechanism to capture donations. I would encourage all organizations to explore the best ways to provide for free agent fundraisers that may emerge from the community. Mobile fundraising though is not necessarily right for every organization or every campaign as it depends on the capacity, purpose and larger effort that it fits into.

What is one quick thing that a nonprofit development office could do in the last ten minutes of their day, just to get started?

Setting up a listening dashboard is a great way to start finding conversations and news as well as identifying who’s talking about your sector, issues, and programs. For a development team, this can mean finding potential funders and partners, as well as getting a finger on the pulse of what’s going on online. Netvibes is a free and easy tool to use and I’ve put up a step by step guide to building a listening dashboard too. (You can also check out my public RSS reader on nonprofit technology at http://netvibes.com/amysampleward.org – and let me know if there are blogs or feeds I should add!)

Once you have your dashboard set up, you can start your day and end your day with a quick 10 minute review of the latest content, comments, and stories.

What do you think of Corporate Social Responsibility and Web 2.0? How is it changing? Is it becoming more “authentic” (allowing real people to blog for companies and talk about their impact) or more “corporate” (anonymous postings)?

What I think you are asking is how CSR departments are using social media; I’d argue that a communication tool wouldn’t make the specific CSR efforts/funds more authentic or more corporate.

I think that, like everyone else, CSR department staff are using social media to tell the story of their work and impact—as they should. The struggle that I see is similar to that in nonprofit organizations: do you tell the story from the perspective of “hey, funders, look at our impact” or do you let those you have served and supported say “hey, world, this is my story.”

Whether it is a company’s CSR program or a nonprofit organization, using social media to join in the conversations that are already happening is crucial. People are talking about you, and you are talking about yourself – best to bring those into one conversation where both sides can learn, new programs/policies/services can emerge, and real exchange can happen. The “authenticity” of messages is much easier to achieve with social media because you have a profile (with a name and a picture) or a video with people talking, etc. You can be a person, and not a brand or a name or an organization – and that is where the real power lies.

Thank you Amy, for a very informative interview!

What questions do you have after reading this? What would you like to know more about?

Please leave a comment.

Thank you!

Amy Sample Ward talks the Future of Fundraising Online and CSR originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on June 4, 2010.

This is Part 1 of an interview with Amy Sample Ward. I <3 Amy for many reasons and also because she really helped me get into social media back in 2007, invited me to Net Tuesday meet-ups in Portland, shared a cup of tea with me, and she introduced me to my sweetheart, as well! She's an incredible human being who has had a tremendous impact on my life. All of this doesn't really come across in the interview, but I just wanted to say, Amy ROCKS!

Amy Sample Ward is dedicated to supporting and educating nonprofits and the progressive social change sector about evolving technologies that cultivate and engage communities. Her passion is in connecting nonprofits with new media technologies, watching the field of NPTech evolve, and having conversations about where we can go next while still getting everyone on board with what we have already. She has worked for nonprofits and foundations, and is now the Community Builder of NetSquared, an initiative of TechSoup.

Over the last two weeks, I’ve been asking Amy Sample Ward some questions on what nonprofits can do with social media.

What’s Web 2.0, in a nutshell?

I think “web 2.0″ as a term has become ubiquitous, people using to define most anything they do online. In a way, that is true. I define “web 2.0″ as the Internet tools, platforms, widgets and functionality that rely on and enable community (whether it is peer-to-peer or community wide) interaction, sharing, and collaborating. There’s also the Wikipedia definition.

What is the real-time web, in a slightly larger nutshell?

To me, the Real-Time Web is as much about the functionality and tools that enable sharing, subscribing, and monitoring of content online as it happens, as it is about the way people are driving and responding to those tools. There’s always the Wikipedia definition, too.

How can nonprofits use Web 2.0 most effectively for fundraising, in your opinion? Who is doing it right? Who could do better?

This is a really big question. It’s like saying how can nonprofits use events most effectively for fundraising.

The hot debate right now is around fundraising competitions – like those sponsored by Chase, Case Foundation, Pepsi and others.

The best way to approach fundraising online is to start with your community and the goal of your work. You may find that using social media tools to fundraise is a great match for your community and your work; and you may not. But you can’t force it – so evaluating your community’s use of social media first and the tools or platforms that match your mission and approach are key.

For some case studies of organizations fundraising online, check out the reports from NTEN on the eNonprofit Benchmarking Reports.

Have the full fundraising potentials of this been tapped? If not, what are we getting wrong? What could we do better as a sector?

Tools are emerging and developing every day. So, there’s always potential as far as the infrastructure. But, with fundraising, so many of the same tactics, best practices, and methods apply online as they do offline. In that way, unless human nature changes, we are dealing with the same questions about what works and what doesn’t but using online tools or names instead of offline ones.

Most online fundraising success stories are those that involve the community, create ways for people to personalize their actions or involvement, and leverage storytelling in the ask and the overall campaign.

What questions do you have after reading this? What would you like to know more about?

Watch out for Part 2 tomorrow!

Thank you!

How can Nonprofits use Web 2.0 for fundraising? An Interview with Amy Sample Ward originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on June 3, 2010.

The Wing Asian Museum, Seattle

I am about to fly out the window with delight! Lend an ear to Alison Fine’s quick 15 minute interview with Nina K. Simon, author of The Participatory Museum, and Rob Stein, chief information officer at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, which covers innovations for how arts groups and museums can engage with visitors and donors online.

Example One: The Wing Museum, in Seattle, A COMMUNITY MUSEUM
The Wing Museum is a participatory community based museum, which means that community members create each exhibit, become board members, docents, and volunteers. There is a very strong community network around the museum, which the museum facilitates, and in turn the community nourishes the museum. I love this! This is how nonprofit should be. Woven into the fabric of the community, and led by the community, not just sucked dry for money.

I think Seattle has to be one of the top cities for museum innovation in America. When I was there in 2009, there was an African exhibit on the top floor of the Seattle Art Museum, and they had some ritual instruments from an African tribe. The tribe actually participated in the creation of the exhibit, explaining what the instruments did, and how to arrange them in the exhibit. This is the first time I’ve ever seen this happen, and I hope that this leads to greater curation collaboration between Indian tribes in North America and museums.

Example Two: TOTAL TRANSPARENCY from The Indianapolis Museum! Scary, and Good!

You are not going to believe this. The Indianapolis Museum Put a magnifying glass onto their website which shows how the museum operates! Behold.

Total transparency! Scary and Good!

They show how they achieve their goals, and they are extremely open with it. They not only show how many visitors, but their energy conservation efforts. They even show the total size of the endowment.
Further, it’s not a flat page, but a user can see the trends over time. And they even have a development page. Check it out!

Development Transparency

They’ve only had 56 new memberships so far this year. That’s not so hot. But they’re OPEN about it. That makes me trust them. The reason this makes me tapdance is because so many nonprofits don’t understand the need for transparency, or don’t think they have the resources to do it, when in reality, with the age of nonprofit scandals rising, transparency is going to distinguish the nonprofits who want to engage with their communities versus the ones that want to remain closed, hierarchical, and silent.

Top Tips: Experiments have to extend from online to onsite. They need to be equally friendly and open in person. And be willing to admit your mistakes.

If you want to learn more, Nina Simon’s Got a book
And you can read it free.

Conclusion: This interview makes me happy for several reasons.

1. It shows that Museums can stop lamenting the lack of visitors and the downfall of society and understand that they need to engage the community in new ways. And there’s a whole book you can read about it on how to do it. For free.

2. This method of engaging the community to create exhibits and to show exactly what’s going on, good or bad, makes me feel that we are entering a more “participatory democracy” kind of phase for museums, instead of a top down hierarchical phase that we’ve had in the past. And that’s a good thing.

Why not make it the center of the community, and let it be a useful gathering place, instead of just having the museum be shunted off to the side for special occasions? Doesn’t that sound more sustainable than having a birthday party at a Children’s museum, or an extra arts school tacked on as an afterthought? Engage children in creating exhibits! And engage community members in something they have authority with. Give people a reason to talk about your museum, to gather at your museum, to volunteer and donate there. This will make sustaining the museum itself so much easier.

And if you’re not in an arts organization, can you take these lessons and apply them to your own nonprofit? What transparency could you implement right now on your website? What measures could you take to get the word out about your next open house?

Do you work at an arts organization? originally appeared on Wild Woman Fundraising on April 7, 2010.