activating online communities to maximize impact · activating online communities to maximize...

ACTIVATINGONLINE COMMUNITIESTO MAXIMIZE IMPACT

Future challenges:

2017

Summary Report prepared by TakingITGlobal based on inputs from over 100 youth-serving organizations

April 2014

Table of Contents

Executive Summary ..................................................................................................................................... 3

Topline Insights ........................................................................................................................................ 3

Exploring the Thematic Framework: .................................................................................................... 6

Tech Tools for Change ............................................................................................................................. 6

Introduction ................................................................................................................................................. 8

Goals & Issues .......................................................................................................................................... 8

Engagement Pathway Activity ................................................................................................................. 9

Awareness ......................................................................................................................................... 10

Engagement ....................................................................................................................................... 10

Mobilization ....................................................................................................................................... 10

Pathways to ‘Leadership’ ................................................................................................................... 10

Mobile Tech: Questions? Challenges? Opportunities! .......................................................................... 11

Closing Thoughts .................................................................................................................................... 11

Appendix .................................................................................................................................................... 12

Open Space Technology ............................................................................................................................ 12

Survey Analysis .......................................................................................................................................... 13

Features & Functions ............................................................................................................................. 15

List of Tools ............................................................................................................................................ 16

Activating Online Communities to Maximize Impact

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Executive Summary

Challenges facing communities from local to global contexts are understood through the diversity of lenses represented among those actively leading change. Looking to explore the landscape of contemporary and future challenges on the topic of Activating Online Communities to Maximize Impact within the Ontario provincial context, TIG convened twelve key organizations collectively addressing a distributed network of more than 30,000 young people across the province. Reflecting a diverse array of communities and issues, the session explored three key topics, aiming to understand how represented groups in Ontario (1) Connect, (2) Consult, and (3) Collaborate with one another, with funders, and with the communities they serve. The topic underwriting the dialogue was technology, with a focus on identifying common opportunities for knowledge sharing and mobilization, from ‘better practices’ to tools and techniques around platforms, mobile technology and community engagement. Following the initial Ontario consultation, an online survey was launched inviting participation from the thousands of organizations active within the TIG Organizational Network. This secondary dataset included inputs from over two-‐hundred organizations representing a diversity of perspectives from six regions globally with specific inputs from 20+ countries. Below is an overview of the insights reflected in this combined dataset.

Topline Insights: 1. ‘No You Go First…’: Organizations are willing to exchange their own toolkit for technology in

exchange for insight into the tools being used effectively by others within the sector 2. ‘Talk + Action – Proof = 0’: Even when the tools are known, e.g., ‘Social Media’, there is

considerable interest in knowledge sharing to highlight effective tactics that ‘work’ to support engagement across communities beyond basic ‘Liking’ or ‘Tweeting’ behaviours

3. ‘The ground is shifting’: Technology platforms are viewed as a foundational part of service delivery and will increasingly inform and constrain program efficacy across the sector, creating a need for information around low-‐cost, flexible and ‘tested’ solutions

4. ‘Volunteering 3.0’: Sustainability in the majority of cases was driven in part by volunteerism, with recruitment, retention and on-‐ versus traditionally offline action as challenges

5. Top Features for a technology platform: Dynamic, Beautiful and ‘Trackable’ a. ‘Adaptable main page to feature highlights, summaries of actions and stories of

volunteers etc.’ b. ‘Monitoring, evaluation and learning tool to collect outcome indicators’ c. ‘Embedding of multimedia content such as YouTube, Vimeo or Flickr images’

The general perspective on technology and the NGO/NFP sector in Ontario is that it creates channels through which new and engaging opportunities can be co-‐created, promoted and ultimately explored by young Ontarians. Irrespective of area of focus, the challenge is understanding how best to avoid pitfalls that come from managing ‘Off the Shelf’ versus ‘Custom’ tools relative to more than the basic ‘bottom line’. While cost is key, what remains critical is proven cases highlighting the effective integration of technology into organizational, program and project contexts. Insights of this variety, namely those that highlight the effective bridging of technology within the frame that the theory of change can yield better individual and community outcomes. In part as a preparation of changes in the consumptive behaviours and expectations of young people within communities of services in the future, but equally in response to the changes that have already led to shifts in the way organizations develop, plan, execute and control local projects in Ontario.


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Tech Tools: Overview & Trends

Among the technology tools participants were invited to discuss, the following list reflects those that were reported to be ‘most relevant to your organization in 2017’. The most commonly mentioned tools are captured in the table below.

Category: Tool: Insights and Future Directions:

Social M

edia

Twitter

-‐ Brief messages with a clear target and capacity to connect directly 1:1 with influencers will drive social network engagement

-‐ Value of Facebook / ‘profile’ model was not mentioned, but the newly released ‘Paper’ may be a space to watch

-‐ LinkedIn was not introduced directly, but could become a bigger player in supporting volunteer recruitment

Social M

edia

Analytics

HootSuite

-‐ Coordinating and managing a diversity of media channels is a challenge and as tools continue to evolve and diversify, aggregation and reporting tools will play a larger role in communications within the sector

Collabo

ratio

n To

ols

Google Docs

-‐ Real-‐Time, Multi-‐User ideation tools are an increasing backbone within the sector, with the ethos of collaboration underwriting increasingly larger portions of the design and development process

-‐ While traditional software suites may provide richer features, organizations are prepared to sacrifice these in favour low/no-‐cost, collaborative options

-‐ This may also speak to changes in organizational structure around the decentralization of control, conventionally associated with ‘document ownership’; the inclusion of multiple real-‐time voices may support a shift towards more collaborative and ‘flatter’ team or organizational structures


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Vide

o Co

nferen

ce

Skype

-‐ Real-‐time video collaboration through platforms like Skype will continue to play a larger role

-‐ The implications of increasing ICT penetration globally through improved mobile networks will create new opportunities for rich engagement, with video creating compelling emotional connections

-‐ Distributed team and volunteer engagement will increasing rely on video as a mode of communication

Web

Ana

lytic

s Google Analytics

-‐ Traditional web backdrop, and ‘actions’ online are expressed as more than ‘logins’ or ‘visits’; The trend among respondents is towards increased capacity to learn and experiment with data to derive insights that tie-‐back to more conventional offline monitor and evaluation challenges

-‐ There may be opportunities for web analytics frameworks or ‘NFP/NGO’ insights sharing to highlight successful approaches bridging promotion (through marketing activations) and tracking through more sensitive, thoughtful and integrative approaches to analytics

-‐ Being ‘a Tech NFP/NGO’ is not going to cut it – the need for better analytically grounded insights is indicative of an increasing demand among either users, funders or both; Organizations that can integrate these approaches into the design, execution and reporting will be well positioned for the future

Web

Design WordPress

-‐ Simple, cost-‐effective and design-‐friendly tools for website development speak to design aesthetics of simplicity, vertical scrolling, and minimalism

-‐ Usage of tools that are ‘code-‐light’ and do not require the same level of technical fluency are mentioned and preferred as these will bring down labour costs on development and management

-‐ This could reflect an expected decrease in the differential value of highly technical / custom websites as platforms for engagement move from desktop to alternative platforms / screens


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Exploring the Thematic Framework:

1. Connection: New channels, new fluencies and existing divisions

Organizations recognize their capacity to serve is correlated with their ability to reach those within their respective communities of service. Technology plays an integral role in mediating these connections as both an accelerator and a barrier for underserved communities, mirroring socio-‐economic, and urban-‐rural divides. Understanding ‘points of entry’, and establishing a variety of actions and outcomes to enable a more ‘personal’ connection or sense of proximity will be important parts of forward-‐looking strategies.

2. Consultation: Youth-‐to-‐youth insight, organization-‐to-‐organization knowledge sharing

Organizations identified the importance of consultation along two primary dimensions, (1) organization-‐to-‐individual; and (2) organization-‐to-‐organization. The critical role of a consultative approach underwrote the primacy of bi-‐directional communicative tools (e.g., social media networks) as critical assets in the creation of awareness and engagement across issues-‐based and organizational-‐level mandates. Organizations also indicated the perceived importance of mutual support around effective tools and techniques. Similar to the notion of a traditional consultant sharing industry or sectoral insights tailored to an individual organization, the opportunity for knowledge sharing around ‘tools and approaches that work’ was viewed as important and valuable insight.

3. Collaboration: Beyond ‘staying in touch’, we can work together to add reciprocal value

Overall, 92% of organizations attending indicated ‘Collaboration with others within and beyond the sector’ as being of high importance (Q1, Top2Box: 92%, n=12). Through the consultation, willingness to ‘share’ information about the technology ‘toolkits’ was offered openly, followed in the majority of cases by the request to ‘share back’ the information collected. Among respondents, roughly two-‐thirds expressed an organizational willingness to ‘share lessons learned on technology tool usage, integration and application towards achieving [individual] missions’ (Q21, Top2Box: 64%, n=12). In specific, the terms ‘Platform’, ‘Tools’, ‘Community’ and ‘Effective’ were among the most common recurring. The view is that while options are varied, there are significant questions within and across organizations about what is the ‘best’ option, balancing cost and complexity, scalability and user experience for both internal project staff and external project stakeholders. The notion of ‘Community’ also references the potential for organizational networks to cross-‐pollinate, recognizing that individuals served by or engaging with one organization may touch multiple actors across the array of organizations.


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Introduction Much of the work at TakingITGlobal aims to bridge online engagement with real world impact. During the Activating Online Communities to Maximize Impact – Future Challenges 2017 roundtable, there were three exploratory tools used to help guide discussion. The first tool was an Engagement Pathways Activity to highlight the how each organization views engagement within their sector. The second tool was Open Space Technology facilitation which was used to explore three core questions relevant to the group:

• What does the future look like when we shift our mindset from 'engaging volunteers', to creating communities of action and learning?

• What are we learning about activating networks of youth for social good?

• What does it mean to truly leverage online engagement for offline impact

Lastly, the third tool was a survey to see where each organization sits at the present time and where they would like to see their tools and platforms expand to in 2017. This discussion included participation from the following organizations: United Way Toronto, Inspirit Foundation, Civic Action, Youth Challenge International, Get Involved, Youthful Cities, Ontario Council for International Cooperation, Greenpeace Canada, Boys and Girls Club Canada, Innovate for Good and TakingITGlobal (Appendix C1.1).

Goals & Issues

During the group introductions, each participant described their organization and how it currently uses online tools and platforms to connect with their members. While each organization was unique each faced similar goals and issues with regards to the future of their current technology, connecting to the public and youth engagement. As technology becomes more common in everyday life, it is necessary for organizations to adopt new technological tools and platforms to avoid the risk of becoming outdated. With regards to the future mandates of the organizations involved, many have set goals to broaden their social networking horizons to increase visibility and to connect with targeted demographics. However, as these organizations are adapting to the changing technology they are meeting many common obstacles that are hindering their development. The most pressing issue in this sector is not having the proper training or funding to support these endeavors. The organizations are looking to create both short and long-‐term strategies to help manage the development of new technological platforms and tools. As the organizations become more technologically advanced they are able to connect with a larger more diverse cultural demographic than before. The organizations involved in this discussion plan to integrate online recruitment tools to shift from a solely event based process to something broader. This will allow the organizations to reach a larger, more dynamic pool of collaborators and volunteers. Since many of the organization who participated in Activating Online Communities are based on youth engagement, it is important to keep up-‐to-‐date with the online and mobile tools that this demographic is using. The obstacles that the organizations are facing with youth engagement loop back to their technological issues and ability to connect through online platforms. To reach youth in the future the organization need to become more proactive now with their strategies and platforms to make sure they will be relevant in the years to come.


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Engagement Pathway Activity In an effort to explore underlying points of commonality and difference in the models of engagement, organizations were invited to share the process by which individuals first engage and ultimately transition to leadership within their respective impact contexts. As an introduction to the exercise, TakingITGlobal shared its own model as a point of departure, which was used by several organizations for whom the exercise was novel. Interestingly, the majority of models involved a linear perspective on engagement, such that an individual was understood to move in defined steps from one level to the next. A minority of models were non-‐linear, reflecting the view that an individual could enter from multiple starting points and move iteratively through the process. These underlying theoretical assumptions, while largely held in common, provided an opportunity to explore how organizations conceive, assess and track those reached by their programs and projects. While the idea of clear delineations is stipulated at best, the objective of framing a more concrete approach to tracking was seen as beneficial overall.

The terms, ‘awareness’ and ‘engagement’ were the most frequently occurring words used when describing the pathways. Interestingly, ‘trials’, was also a term that was observed, highlighting an interest among some participants in the perceived importance of creating an initial user experience that connects an individual to the organization, program or project outcome directly and immediately to establish initial commitment. The potential of framing community outreach in terms that enable a readily trackable ‘trial’ approach could be an effective trend for the sector moving forward as contrasted with more traditional ‘informational outreach’. For reference, all of the engagement pathway activity images created during the event can be found in the appendix.


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Awareness Awareness was the most commonly used word during the activity. ‘Awareness’, recognized as the most fundamental and basic of outcomes for community engagement, was segmented between online and offline forms, further sub-‐divided between awareness of ‘opportunities’ or ‘issues’. These additional layers add context to the ways in which technology platforms or existing media can be employed to support a diversity of actions. Conversions, actions taken beyond ‘casual browsing’ can be assessed against these additional dimensions to support a more effective approach to monitoring, tracking and ultimately calculating the efficacy of outreach activations across channels. The theme of unpacking the language of traditional models to reflect diversification in the channel was common throughout the discussion.

Engagement While organizations entertain differing definitions and theories of ‘engagement’, the trend was towards the introduction of additional vocabulary to create a more refined concept of what the term entails across the sector. A common theme across several models was the importance of defining roles, or establishing clear processes by which to arrive at a clear definition. With additional clarity, multiple ‘types’ of opportunities, differentiated by levels of ‘active leadership’ and contrasted with more ‘passive opportunities’ were mentioned, spanning both local and global, urban and rural contexts. The prospective benefit of multiple and clearly defined pathways to action is that a diverse range of individuals can ‘see themselves’, ‘more deeply engage’ and readily understand the cumulative results of activities undertaken. This focus on individual progress and cumulative effort relates both to on-‐ and offline contexts, highlighting tools like optimize.ly or Google Analytics experiments, as ways to assess ‘engagement’ across a range of actions taken online.

Mobilization Across the models, a transition from ‘consumption’ behaviours like reading, casual browsing

etc., were differentiated from ‘contribution’ behaviours. Actions of the latter type involve greater levels of integration and fluency with the site, focusing the intentions of users around particular activities, actions or tasks beyond ‘information gathering’. While the particulars of what the line consists in vary across organizational contexts, models reflected a key differentiation between both on-‐ and offline mobilization opportunities. The prevalence of this ‘hybrid’ model is indicative of an existing trend towards technology-‐enabled diversification among opportunities, but further emphasizes the importance of tracking and experimenting with online forms of engagement as a key component of effective and efficient ‘mobilization’.

Pathways to ‘Leadership’ In all cases, the highest level of engagement involves the transition from an ‘active user’ to a ‘leader’ within a particular organizational context. In the majority of instances, ‘leadership’ involves promotion and recruitment behavior, fostering a sustainable ecosystem in which those who have participated in the past become the vanguard highlighting ‘what is possible’ to those that are new to the space. Understanding the dimensions of leadership within the organizational and sectoral context will be increasingly important as different expressions of leadership behaviours may align better to some technological channels than others. Leveraging Twitter to conduct outreach to influencers is, as an example, one way to leverage social capital to ‘Tweet At’ those in a position to substantively increase base awareness. Whether or not that ‘casual tweet’ constitutes a robust example of ‘leadership’ remains an open question. The idea of Campbell’s law is equally iterated here – if metrics become the objective, then the real objective becomes gaming the metrics.


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Mobile Tech: Questions? Challenges? Opportunities! In the discussion on mobile technology, the focus was on understanding what the DNA of a ‘great app experience’ entails. What separates an mobile app that gains mass appeal and traction from another that is lost in the sea of app store approvals and the Google Play sandbox? First, apps must leverage the geo-‐local and temporal dynamics of the phone, i.e., ‘be useful to me where I am, when I am there, or else’. Second, the connection between an individual and an activity is more direct, which means we need to know both who we’re trying to reach and what we are inviting them to do with us through the app. The key challenges relate to the integration of social sharing, the optimal ‘ask’ for users to identify what they do and do not want to do within the app context, and how to ‘break through’ a comparatively large volume of competitive offerings. Additionally, interruptive and ad-‐based approaches are perceived to be intrusive and unwelcome. The notion of having an ‘open channel’ with highly engaged users is a challenge to rethink what organizations would do if they were invited to have this level of openness with their respective communities.

Closing Thoughts One of the biggest concerns during the takeaway discussion was how to manage the relationship online vs. face-‐to-‐face. When talking about the online relationship vs. the face-‐to-‐face two questions were asked: ‘How can we see the level of engagements when the participant is engaging online rather than in person?’ and ‘How to get the participant to engage beyond just liking a page?’ Some of the answers to these questions in the group were to create ways for visible engagement such as; writing a blog, liking a post or creating a game style activity to keep people engaged, involved and informed. As smart phones and android devices are becoming more assessable to the public the need to connect with members via mobile phones and apps will be the way of the future. That being said the organizations who participated in Activating Online Communities are worried about finding or training staff to create these platforms and also the costs this type of program will entail. The organizations want to focus on a strategy that invests in resources, platforms and covers the needs of the stakeholders. They want to create websites and apps that are user, can be mobile accessible and cost effective. While the goals of the organizations are to get people involved they are also worried about upsetting the members by too many updates, notifications and unnecessary information. This worry brought on the conversation of levels of engagement and how filtering can be used to meet the needs of the participants on the online platforms. Thus balancing levels of engagement is an area in need of development in the years to come.


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Appendix Below is an overview of the methods used to conduct the session, and an overview of some of the findings and raw data used in framing this report.

Open Space Technology

Open Space Technology is used to open up the communication lines between multiple parties to help reach a common goal or solution. In the case of Activating Online Communities to Maximize Impact session, the common goal of the group was to help each organization to overcome the obstacles they may face with regards to the future of their online platforms.

Open space technology uses a tool called a marketplace to advertise what topics/issues the group would like to talk about. For the Activating Online Communities to Maximize Impact session the following is a list of topics in which the group wanted to discuss:


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Survey Analysis A survey was used to help inform the discussion and identify alignment around key challenges and opportunities for collaboration. The results used in the survey analysis were derived from a total completed sample of 117 participants representing multiple organizations, countries, regions and issues areas respectively.

• Overall, the majority of respondents indicated the clear perceived importance of collaboration within the sector.

n=117

• Overall, the majority of respondents are significantly less confident in the capacity of existing technology platforms to address the needs of their stakeholders in 2017.

n=117

• The majority of respondents indicated a high degree of ‘openness to share’ specific insights about technology used to support their efforts.

• Finding ways to highlight

what information the sector is comfortable to share is critical to future collaborative efforts.

n=117

7% 16%

77%

0%

50%

100%

Mobile Importance

Importance of Collaborapon:

<6 7-‐8 9-‐10

46% 33% 21%

0%

50%

100%

Mobile Importance

Plarorm Confidence:

<6 7-‐8 9-‐10

11% 27%

62%

0%

50%

100%

Mobile Importance

Openness to Sharing:

<6 7-‐8 9-‐10


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• The importance of having a clearly defined Mobile Strategy was perceived by the majority as a crucial component of their future success.

n=117

• Despite the high level of importance in the development of an effective mobile strategy, the majority of respondents did not indicate high degrees of confidence in their current capacity to develop one.

n=117

13% 26%

61%

0%

50%

100%

Mobile Importance

Mobile Strategy Importance:

<6 7-‐8 9-‐10

54% 24% 22%

0%

50%

100%

Mobile Importance

Mobile Strategy Confidence:

<6 7-‐8 9-‐10


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Features & Functions The survey invited respondents to evaluate the importance of a number of prospective technical features that could be included in an ‘ideal’ technology platform, engineered to support the shared efforts of the community and to achieving organizational mandates over the mid-‐term. Results from this consultation are summarized in the table below. Key Insights:

1. Adaptability: Main-‐pages need to be flexible to accommodate a variety of kinds of data, based on the specific interests, demands and opportunities that organizations may require

2. Monitor & Evaluation: Support around outcome indicators and distributed approaches to the definitions and mechanisms for data gathering and analysis are in high demand

3. Content Management & Automation: The capacity to edit and adjust web content without requiring intervention from technology subject-‐matter experts support sustainability over the longer term

Answer Options Unsure No Yes Adaptable main page to feature highlights, summaries of action and stories of volunteers, discussion board topics, summary of action in your subscribed groups, social media & blog updates

4% 5% 90%

Monitoring, Evaluation & learning tool to collect outcome indicators 3% 5% 90%

Administrative back-‐end to allow for managing members, mailing lists 9% 4% 88%

Automatic updates with content feeds pulling from social media sites/platforms 7% 8% 86%

Easy-‐to-‐create community pages for member/community management (discussion board and email list integration, accessible member profiles, file-‐sharing)

8% 7% 85%

Library/Resource-‐sharing platform 6% 10% 83%

Mobile platform interface to gather real time status updates from youth led initiatives to monitor activity and impact

13% 7% 81%

Ability to create custom pages in a Word-‐like editor 9% 13% 78%

Financial reporting and management system 7% 16% 78%

Embedding of YouTube or Vimeo, Flickr images 20% 10% 72%

n=117 Q9: “Thinking about the technology platform, what features and functions are most important to achieving the mandate of your organization in 2017?


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List of Tools Social Networking Multi-‐Media Publishing Content Management Member Services Facebook YouTube WordPress Desk Twitter Vimeo Blogger Zendesk Linkedin Instagram Wikispaces Help Scout Pinterest Flickr Drupal Uservoice Foursquare Tumblr Hootsuite FluidServeys Ning Vine SharPoint SurveyMonkey

Virtual Mtgs & Events Ideation& Docs Groups & BulkMail Volunteer Recruitment Skype Google Apps/Docs Yakoo! Groups GetInvolved Google Hangouts Office365 Google Groups CharityVillage Livestream Evernote MailChimp Idealist Adobe Connect MomentDiary Campaign Monitor Craigslist Blackboard Collaborate PiktoChart Jobscore WebEx MindMeister Customer Relationship Indeed Evite DropBox Management Social Bookmarking Sched DotVoting Salesforce Delicious DoodlePool Prezi SugarCRM StumbleUpon TimeBridge GoodNotes Zoho

Fundraising & Payment Processing

Analytics Project Management

Raiser’s Edge Google Analytics Basecamp CanadaHelps Quantcast JIRA Kickstarter Buffer TeamBox Indiegogo Klout Yammer PayPal StatusBoard Confluence Artez Uberflip Producteev

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