Social Media & Non-Profits
The Two Keys to Social Media Marketing Success
Darian Rodriguez Heyman
Editor, Nonprofit Management 101
As I’ve been traveling around the country with our Social Media for Nonprofits conference series promoting my new book, Nonprofit Management 101, I’ve enjoyed listening to industry leaders like Guy Kawasaki and Beth Kanter shed light on the changing media landscape. In particular, I’ve learned about how nonprofits make the best use of social media to advance fundraising, marketing and advocacy goals.
Although our focus may be on providing nonprofit execs with practical tips and tools — actionable insights nonprofits can put to use immediately — there are two salient takeaways that I believe anyone looking to take a cause viral, whether that’s feeding the homeless or pushing product, need to know in order to be successful online: the secret to going viral; and how to approach World 2.0, where everyone is smarter than anyone.
1. The Secret to Going Viral
My diligent research has proven that I will hear the word “viral” within 42 seconds of talking with any organization interested in marketing a cause or product online. Everyone wants her campaign to harness the immense word-of-mouth power that is the allure of social media. Though, for all the speakers I’ve heard promise to share the secret to going viral, it was a casual conversation with my mentor and friend, Bill Ryan, that finally offered enlightenment. It’s simple yet confounding: C+C+C = C.
- Compelling: Never mind the what; the key is sharing the so what with your audience. If you can’t convey why they should care, and how what you’re talking about relates to their interests… it’s game over.
- Concise: Einstein said it best, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” How can you expect folks to spread the good word if it’s too long and complicated to remember?
- Credible: Great, so you’ve engaged me and done it quickly, but if you try and tell me that your magic beans are the cure to cancer tomorrow, I’m onto whatever else my fascinating network of do-gooders and colleagues is up to.
Put ’em all together and you get the key to viral victory:
- Contagious: The holy grail of social media marketing is attained when your engaging, short, and believable message takes fire and people start spreading it on your behalf; hopefully even remixing your message and broadening your appeal.
2. Crowdsourcing 101
As Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Sandburg first noted in 1949, we have entered a world where everyone is smarter than anyone. Never before has this concept held more true. From 1768 until just a few years back, the Encyclopedia Britannica was the quintessential fountain of knowledge, with its ivory tower approach to amassing and disseminating knowledge. They employed thousands and spent millions building their empire, only to have a rag-tag, open source team of techies turn their world upside down.
Today, Wikipedia continues to rely almost exclusively on volunteer editors and supporters, instead of paid professionals–this June they tallied over 11 million edits in all, with loads of contributors all working on any one article. Their approach yields quality and quantity; as early as 2005, the journal Nature claimed Wikipedia was as accurate as the Encyclopedia, and today it contains over 50 times as many words and articles as its predecessor. Why? Because Wikipedia empowers a community of people, albeit small in proportion to their overall user base, to actively contribute to its fountain of knowledge. They are YouTube, not Paramount.
So whether it’s Wikipedia or YouTube, The Red Cross or charity:water, the question is not how can you use social media and the Internet to expand market share or spread the word about your cause; the question is, How can you use interactive technology to create a mutually beneficial partnership with your constituents? Put yourself in their shoes and make sure you have a clear, compelling reason for why they should bother listening to you in this attention economy, and certainly why they should go through the effort of telling their friends about you. Then open your arms and welcome their input and active participation in shaping your content. In this world, context, not content, is king.
The secrets to going viral and crowdsourcing may be useful and powerful insights, but never let anyone tell you they’re a social media expert; the field is moving too quickly for anyone to claim guru status in this newly forming world.
So tell me — what are the most useful insights you’ve come across that guide your efforts online?
Follow Darian Rodriguez Heyman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/dheyman
Education At All Costs
Despite uncertain future and the regime’s ever-tightening noose
by Sohrab Ahmari
14-May-2012
Photo: Educators affiliated with the Bahai Institute for Higher Education who have been imprisoned in Iran, from left to right, top: Mahmoud Badavam, Ramin Zibaie, Riaz Sobhani, Farhad Sedghi; bottom: Noushin Khadem, Kamran Mortezaie, Vahid Mahmoudi (Bahai World News Service)
The Salvadoran jurist Reynaldo Galindo Pohl died this year at age 93. A former education minister and president of El Salvador’s National Constitutional Assembly, Pohl spent much of his career pressing for human rights, first as a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and later as his country’s ambassador to the United Nations. News of his death barely registered outside Latin American diplomatic circles. But the more than seven million global adherents of the Bahai faith marked it with deep sadness. They remembered Pohl as the tireless diplomat who shed light on the persecution of their co-religionists in the Islamic Republic of Iran at a time when few others were paying attention.
From 1986 to 1994, Pohl served as the U.N. Human Rights Commission’s special representative on Iran. The Iranian regime, he found, was subjecting its largest non-Muslim religious minority to a systematic campaign of cultural eradication. In 1993, Pohl disclosed a chilling memorandum written by Seyyed Mohammad Golpaygani, then secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution. The Golpaygani memorandum, as it came to be known, set out a national policy for dealing with the “Bahai question.” The Iranian government, Golpaygani forthrightly recommended, must ensure that “progress and development are blocked” for Bahais.
The centerpiece of the policy was an express ban on Bahais’ obtaining postsecondary education. They “must be expelled from universities, either in the admissions process or during the course of their studies, once it becomes known that they are Bahais,” Golpaygani wrote. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei approved the memorandum, “In the name of God!”
Two decades later, the rule barring 300,000 or so Bahais from Iran’s colleges and universities remains in place. It is enforced with particular vigor by the hard-line government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Even before Pohl’s exposé, the Bahai community had begun seeking ways to educate its youth. Those efforts culminated in the establishment of a secret distance-education college operated by hundreds of volunteers inside and outside Iran. Despite tremendous logistical constraints and personal risks, the college has been producing impressive results, with many of its students going on to graduate programs at prestigious Western universities. The college is a testament to the ingenuity and resilience of this embattled group.
Sadly, however, a severe regime crackdown begun last year threatens to finally realize Golpaygani’s dream of culturally erasing Iran’s Bahais.
The Bahai faith was founded in mid-19th century Iran by the mystic Baha Ullah, who proclaimed himself the messiah foretold by all world religions. Baha Ullah preached the unity of humankind and called for racial and gender equity—notions that directly contradicted the traditionalist precepts of majority Shiite Iran. Worse, Baha Ullah’s claims of divine revelation came after those of Muhammad, viewed as the “last prophet” by Muslims. As a result, Baha Ullah and his followers drew the enmity of Iran’s clerical class and were subjected to intense persecution. Nevertheless, the Bahai religion gradually made inroads inside Iran and across the Middle East and North Africa, winning converts even in Europe and the United States.
Under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Bahais of Iran generally thrived. While the shah brooked no political dissent, he was committed to improving the lot of the country’s women and ethno-sectarian minorities by abrogating ancient laws that relegated them to second-class status. Despite occasional outbreaks of anti-Bahai mob violence instigated by the clerics—tolerated by the shah when his political power was at an ebb—a number of Bahais reached positions of prominence. In 1971, for example, a Bahai architect designed the Azadi tower, in Tehran, that has since become the city’s symbol.
With the collapse of the shah’s regime and the rise of radical Islamists in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution, clerical hatred for the Bahais once again gripped Iran. “Will there be either religious or political freedom for the Bahais under an Islamic government?” an American scholar, James Cockroft, asked Ruhollah Khomeini soon before the ayatollah returned to lead Iran after 14 years in exile. “They are a political faction; they are harmful; they will not be accepted,” Khomeini sternly responded. In drafting the new Islamic Republic’s Constitution, Khomeini and his allies extended a quasi-protected status to three “official” minority religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism—but excluded the “heretical” Bahai faith, with some of its holiest sites located in the modern-day state of Israel—Iran’s new archenemy.
During the early days of the clerical regime, Khomeini’s anti-Bahai crusade was quite overt, with hundreds of adherents jailed and summarily executed along with thousands of leftists and elements of the former regime. But as the deteriorating human-rights situation in Iran became a focus of international attention, the regime’s anti-Bahaism took on a subtler character. Thousands were terminated from public jobs, and private employers who dared hire Bahais risked criminal prosecution. Golpaygani’s infamous memorandum, codifying the exclusion of Bahais from the country’s higher-education institutions, was part of that second wave of relatively invisible repression.
“Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value,” Baha Ullah instructed his followers. “Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom.” That education and self-improvement are basic tenets of the Bahai faith renders the clerical regime’s policy of barring its adherents from higher education especially cruel. But it also means the community has been remarkably tenacious in seeking credible alternatives to Iran’s colleges and universities.
In 1987 the Bahai Institute for Higher Education was set up as an underground, distance-learning program for Bahai youth. At first the college was quite informal. “The students would meet in the basements of private homes,” Behrouz Sabet, a Capella University faculty member and board member of the Council for Global Education, who has been assisting the institute with research and curriculum design for more than 20 years, told me. Sabet, who immigrated to the United States in 1979, was teaching at the University of South Carolina when institute directors in Iran contacted him, asking for help with translating and developing curricular material. At the time, he recalls, the college was quite informal. “Someone who had chemistry expertise would lecture the students on that topic, while someone else with a biology background would share that expertise.”
Gradually, however, the institute took on a formal character, with more attention devoted to course design and sequencing. With the advent of the Internet and increasing assistance from allies abroad, the college’s curricular standards were bolstered and a wider range of majors and concentrations was introduced. Today the institute offers 32 university-level programs across five faculties. It accepts about 450 first-year students each year, out of, on average, about 1,000 applicants. “Once it went online,” Sabet explained, “the BIHE revised all of the courses and classroom procedures.” Moodle, an open-source, online learning platform similar to Blackboard, allowed faculty and course designers to preload all content. Students could submit assignments to be graded by tutors inside and outside the country. Faculty members could also choose to incorporate other interactive media into their courses.
Bahais are also persecuted across much of the Arab Mideast. Knowing that BIHE degrees could be of practical use only in the West, administrators emphasized English-language instruction very early on. In 2006, Jaleh Dashti-Gibson was working at the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies when she volunteered to serve as an English-as-a-second-language tutor for the institute. “The ESL courses are self-paced,” she remembers. “So they need an army of tutors to help with grading and conversational instruction.” After undergoing Internet-based training, Dashti-Gibson was assigned to a group of 10 students who needed to master English very quickly while also completing their substantive coursework, much or sometimes all of which was in English.
The obstacles were enormous. “We were asking them to learn to think critically in writing, to develop arguments, and account for counterarguments,” Dashti-Gibson, today an administrator at the Green Acre Bahai School, in Eliot, Me., recalls. “At the time, I was working at Notre Dame with high achievers who had trouble doing the same thing. We were really trying to help the Bahais do in a very short time what American native speakers struggle with under normal circumstances.” Compounding the students’ academic burden were the logistical challenges that come with attending an online university in a country where the ruling mullahs regularly restrict Internet access to crack down on dissent.
The students’ own daily lives, too, were frequently troubled by dint of their membership in an outlawed faith group. “We didn’t discuss” their political challenges, Dashti-Gibson told me. “It’s very sensitive.” The security of the institute’s online-learning platform, protected by password, has been repeatedly breached by the regime, shutting down access and compromising the secrecy of students’ identities. But Sabet says the Bahai institute has always been able to restore operations. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, the “reformist” government of President Mohammad Khatami for the most part neglected the institute—despite awareness of its existence. Yet even during that period, intermittent crackdowns continued.
I was born in Iran and spent the first 13 years of my life there, so the institute’s educational successes strike me as near-miraculous. I spoke (appropriately, via Skype) with Niknaz Aftahi, a 2010 graduate who recently immigrated to California and who embodies the power and promise of her alma mater. In 2005, when Aftahi graduated from high school, Iran was at the tail end of a period of relative openness. Under international pressure, the regime was for the first time permitting Bahais to take the national college-entrance examination. A handful of students were admitted and actually managed to obtain degrees. Others were allowed to enroll only to be expelled during their first or second semesters; some were expelled just as they neared graduation. The vast majority, however, had their examinations returned unscored or scored “zero.”
Aftahi was in the last group. Undeterred, she immediately set to work preparing for the institute’s own rigorous entrance examination. Initially she was interested in computer science but then decided to pursue a degree in architecture. To switch to the architecture program, she had to take additional examinations in art history, perspective, and the elements of design. Aftahi and seven other students eventually formed the inaugural class of the institute’s architecture program. “Studying architecture through distance learning was initially very difficult,” she told me. “Learning architecture requires one-on-one interaction, hours in a studio, and site visits.” But thanks to the mentorship of a renowned Bahai architect, as well as a few non-Bahai practitioners willing to lend them studio space, Aftahi and her friends had many of the learning experiences associated with a traditional program.
Since arriving in the United States, Aftahi has worked at several architectural firms in San Diego. Today she is applying to M.A. programs in architecture—a process that poses its own challenges for institute alumni. Of the 12 top-tier universities Aftahi has applied to, only one—the University of Texas at Austin—formally recognizes the Iranian program’s degrees. To gain admission to the rest, Aftahi must meet individually with admissions deans and explain her unique circumstances.
Even so, awareness of young Bahais’ plight is growing among higher-education officials in the West. More than 65 Western universities have already admitted alumni of the institute to their graduate programs. And last December, 48 deans of U.S. medical schools, led by Philip A. Pizzo, dean of Stanford University’s School of Medicine, signed a letter urging Iranian authorities to repeal their viciously discriminatory policies toward the country’s Bahais.
If recent developments are any indication, however, such pleas will fall on deaf ears. Last May, Iran’s theocrats renewed a crackdown, initially begun in the late 1990s, against the Bahai institute. They arrested a number of community leaders associated with the college and tried them on the usual, spurious charges leveled against dissidents and free thinkers in Iran, including “espionage for Israel.” They also raided several private homes where institute records, equipment, and instructional materials were stored. Last fall, Branch 28 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court handed down four- and five-year sentences to the leaders involved. Among those detained was Riaz Sobhani, a civil engineer whose son Naim works as a senior executive with an American automobile retailer.
“My father was doing nothing but helping young people who are otherwise completely deprived of opportunities to succeed,” Naim, who was himself arbitrarily detained several times on account of his faith before immigrating to America, told me. “It is a terrible disaster. I was a little kid when the revolution happened, and our lives were turned upside-down. Then gradually things got a little bit better, and now all these nightmares are coming back.” Naim’s sister, Jinous, who studied law with the institute, has also been arrested several times and spent months in solitary confinement for having worked with the Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi’s Defenders of Human Rights Center. “The last time they released her,” Naim told me, “they made her sign a statement saying she would desist all human-rights activity in Iran.”
Despite its uncertain future and the regime’s ever-tightening noose, the institute’s faculty will press on. “This is a matter of principle for the Bahais,” Sabet, the longtime associate, told me. “They have no other choice. Public employers do not hire them, and the private sector is closed off as well. The BIHE is the only hope they have.”
First published in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
AUTHOR
Sohrab Ahmari, an Iranian-American journalist and a nonresident associate research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, is co-editor of Arab Spring Dreams: The Next Generation Speaks Out for Freedom and Justice From North Africa to Iran, a forthcoming anthology of writings by young Mideast dissidents (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
Fundraising on Facebook: Where Do You Start?
Fundraising on Facebook: Where Do You Start?
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Darian Heyman, author of Nonprofit Management 101 and co-producer of Social Media for Nonprofits combed through the hundreds of tips and takeaways featured in Nonprofit Management 101 and pulled out a handful of gems that will revolutionize your ability to bring more money in the door without adding additional, daunting responsibilities to your schedule. Be sure to look for more tips from Darian’s book in the coming weeks!
How to Raise Money on Facebook
If you’ve been avoiding getting your organization involved in Facebook, here are three good reasons to think twice:
- Facebook has an audience of 600 million and growing, making it equivalent to the population of the world’s 3rd largest country
- Meet them where they’re at: it is extremely likely that a considerable amount of your wired network is already engaged on the platform
- More and more donations are happening online
Here are a few guidelines for getting started with Facebook:
First, create a “Page” for your organization—this is similar to a personal profile. It allows members to become a “friend” of your nonprofit, allowing them to subscribe to your updates and engage in dialogue with you and other supporters. To set up your Facebook Page, visit: www.facebook.com/pages/create.php.
Second, create a Facebook Group: If you are interested in sending direct messages to the inboxes of your supporters (and you have under 5,000 followers), setting up a group is the way to go. Without a group, you are limited to posting status updates and having your supporters read them via their Facebook News Feed. To set up your group, visit www.facebook.com/groups/create.php.
Once you are established on Facebook and your supporters are accustomed to communicating with you through this platform, it is time to start raising money. “Causes” is a tool (application) built for Facebook that allows you to fundraise within the Facebook network. While it’s difficult to build a community within Causes, it’s worth exploring as a fundraising supplement to your Page or Group. Get a better feel for this tool at www.causes.com.
Once you are set up on Facebook, a great tip for integrating fundraising activities is to use the platform to express thanks for member contributions generously and frequently—public recognition helps spread loyalty and reinforces generous support. Read more from Nicci Noble and Sean Sullivan in Chapter 22 of Nonprofit Management 101, “Online Peer-to-Peer Fundraising.”
Image: Image: tungphoto / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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Nonprofit Management 101 by Darian Heyman
Edited by Darian Hayman, the former Executive Director of Craigslist Foundation and co-producer of Social Media for Nonprofits, this handbook will educate and empower a whole generation of nonprofit leaders and professionals by bringing together top experts in the field to share their knowledge and wisdom gained through experience. In it, nonprofit professionals will find the conceptual frameworks, practical knowledge, and concise guidance needed to succeed in the social sector. Learn More
Social Media For Non-Profits
April 25, 2012
Darian Heyman, Social Media for Nonprofits, Women Moving Millions and Next Gen NGO Leadership
I was recently invited to speak on a panel at the Utah Society of Fundraisers Fundraising Day on women’s giving. Preceding it was a luncheon with keynote speaker Darian Heyman and let me say, WOW!! Darian spoke about the future of fundraising including how social media can be utilized to reach millions.
So how do you go “viral”? He laid out the answer by means of a simple equation, C+C+C=C. Darian explained that in order to have your message go viral it needs to be “COMPELLING” – why should anyone care about your message? Secondly, it needs to be “CONCISE.” Unless your message is to the point and easily accessible, people will miss the purpose. Third, it has to be “CREDIBLE.” In Darian’s words, “Great, so you’ve engaged me and done it quickly, but if you try and tell me that your magic beans are the cure to cancer tomorrow, I’m onto whatever else my fascinating network of do-gooders and colleagues is up to.” The three C’s come together to create a “CONTAGIOUS” message thus going “viral.” This was clearly the secret sauce with the internet sensation the KONY 2012 campaign which was viewed more than 100 million times in just under a week making it the most viral video in history. By utilizing social media to transmit a message the potential for online fundraising or raising awareness is dramatic.
So what does the future look like in terms of online fundraising? According to a report by Blackbaud (“The Blackbaud Index of Online Giving ) looking at total giving for 1,700 organizations of varied sizes the average online revenue accounted for 6% of their overall fundraising revenue. This number is growing with The Index of Online Giving “showing a 23% increase in March to May 2010 revenue over the same period in 2009 across the 1,787 organizations tracked, with large organizations (revenue over $10 million) showing a 28% increase.” If you don’t have an online strategy, you will be missing a potentially very big boat.
Though online giving has huge potential Darian also said that one of the most powerful forms of fundraising ask is the “peer ask.” I loved this as this is what Women Moving Millions is all about. He said that being asked to give to an organization by one of your peers is more powerful than being asked by someone you don’t know and does not know you. Better yet if that person is asking you because you have already shown an interest in the issue areas of that organization. I feel strongly that we have come to rely to much on the development efforts of our NGO partners. Of course professional fundraisers are very important and needed, but it can and should not be a substitute for a committed Board of Directors and current donor network, and now these online possibilities.
Raising money is both hard and expensive. Though the number varies hugely depending on the type of organization it can be said that 10-20% of revenues go towards raising those dollars. If WMM is successful, our measurable impact will be to dramatically reduce the overall development costs for the women’s movement. It was always the vision of our Co Founder Helen LaKelly Hunt that WMM would become a development engine for women’s funds and that continues to be our vision. Current donors should take a more active role in fund raising for the organizations THEY care about most. WMM exists to support these efforts by supporting our member’s philanthropic leadership. Perhaps our motto should be ‘Step up, give and bring others with you.’
The power of the peer ask is what is behind the online potential of fundraising through platforms such as Facebook. When people like you, and you like a cause, and are willing to press for support, money follows. This is especially true for micro-donations where giving a small amount for someone you care about is a relatively easy thing to do it. Though not all small gifts will lead to bigger levels of involvement, some will. Years ago I dreamed that one day we would be able to share with all who are interested the causes and organizations we care most about, and now we can! We have gone from fav book to fav NGOS, social change videos, and more. Further I imagined an “amazon’ type thing for giving where if you shared what organizations you have to, others would be suggested with like missions. I am dreaming this in to our web platform for WMM and perhaps more generally.
Darian’s facts around social media lead to a powerful conversation around next generation leadership. With nearly 78 million baby-boomers and just about 38 million Gen Xers there are about half as many people to take board positions for many nonprofits. We are not preparing our organizations for this potential problem. BoardSource Nonprofit Governance Index 2010 reveled that only 3% of board members are under the age of 30 and nearly 50% of board members were between 50-64 years old. The current age of board members is not an accurate representation of the community many organizations serve. Empowering younger team members to get involved and to get “social” makes smart business sense. One of Darian’s points, which is a bit harsh but ultimately true, “This country is an alcoholic, we have to hit rock bottom to realize we need to change.” Whether it’s in reference to needing younger board members, more female board members or needing more substantial social media fundraising strategies, we’ve got some work to do and let’s not hit rock bottom to make it happen.
You can get a copy of Darian Heyman’s new book, “Nonprofit Management 101: A complete and practical Guide for Leaders and Professionals” here.
Additional resources Darian mentioned-
Social Entrepreneurship Websites
www.ashoka.org Skoll Foundation Social Enterprise Alliance Tap Root Foundation (Where skilled professionals can donate their time to nonprofits) Social Media for Nonprofits Websites Beth Kanter Blog Social Brite Social Media for Nonprofits Nonprofit Technology Network References: http://www.jackizehner.com/2012/04/25/darian-heyman-social-media-for-nonprofits-women-moving-millions-and-next-gen-ngo-leadership/Jody Williams-The Email that Lead to a Nobel Prize
Prologue: The Super-Story by Thomas L. Friedman
I am a big believer in the idea of the super-story, the notion that we all carry around with us a big lens, a big framework, through which we look at the world, order events, and decide what is important and what is not. The events of 9/11 did not happen in a vacuum. They happened in the context of a new international system – a system that cannot explain everything but can explain and connect more things in more places on more days than anything else. That new international system is called globalization. It came together in the late 1980s and replaced the previous international system, the cold war system, which had reigned since the end of World War II. This new system is the lens, the super-story, through which I viewed the events of 9/11.
I define globalization as the inexorable integration of markets, transportation systems, and communication systems to a degree never witnessed before – in a way that is enabling corporations, countries, and individuals to reach around the world farther, faster, deeper, and cheaper than ever before, and in a way that is enabling the world to reach into corporations, countries, and individuals farther, faster, deeper, and cheaper than ever before.
Several important features of this globalization system differ from those of the cold war system in ways that are quite relevant for understanding the events of 9/11. I examined them in detail in my previous book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, and want to simply high-light them here.
The cold war system was characterized by one overarching feature – and that was division. That world was a divided-up, chopped-up place, and whether you were a country or a company, your threats and opportunities in the cold war system tended to grow out of who you were divided from. Appropriately, this cold war system was symbolized by a single word – wall, the Berlin Wall.
The globalization system is different. It also has one overarching feature – and that is integration. The world has become an increasingly interwoven place, and today, whether you are a company or a country, your threats and opportunities increasingly derive from who you are connected to. This globalization system is also characterized by a single word – web, the World Wide Web. So in the broadest sense we have gone from an international system built around division and walls to a system increasingly built around integration and webs. In the cold war we reached for the hotline, which was a symbol that we were all divided but at least two people were in charge – the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union. In the globalization system we reach for the Internet, which is a symbol that we are all connected and nobody is quite in charge.
Everyone in the world is directly or indirectly affected by this new system, but not everyone benefits from it, not by a long shot, which is why the more it becomes diffused, the more it also produces a backlash by people who feel overwhelmed by it, homogenized by it, or unable to keep pace with its demands.
The other key difference between the cold way system and the globalization system is how power is structured within them. The cold war system was built primarily around nation-states. You acted on the world in that system through your state. The cold way was a drama of states confronting states, balancing states, and aligning with states. And, as a system, the cold war was balanced at the center by two superstates, two superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union.
The globalization system, by contrast, is built around three balances, which overlap and affect one another. The first is the traditional balance of power between nation-states. In the globalization system, the United States is now the sole and dominant superpower and all other nations are subordinate to it to one degree or another. The shifting balance of power between the United States and other states, or simply between other states, still very much matters for the stability of this system. And it can still explain a lot of the news you read on the front page of the paper, whether it is the news of China balancing Russia, Iran balancing Iraq, or India confronting Pakistan.
The second important power balance in the globalization system is between nation-states and global markets. These global markets are made up of millions of investors moving money around the world with the click of a mouse. I call them the Electronic Herd, and this herd gathers in key global financial centers – such as Wall Street, Hong Kong, London, and Frankfurt – which I call the Supermarkets. The attitudes and actions of the Electronic Herd and the Supermarkets can have a huge impact on nation-states today, even to the point of triggering the downfall of governments. Who ousted Suharto in Indonesia in 1998? It wasn’t another state, it was the Supermarkets, by withdrawing their support for, and confidence in, the Indonesian economy. You also will not understand the front page of the newspaper today unless you bring the Supermarkets into your analysis. Because the United States can destroy you by dropping bombs, but the Supermarkets can destroy you by downgrading your bonds. In other words, the United States is the dominant player in maintaining the globalization game board, but it is hardly alone in influencing the moves on that game board.
The third balance that you have to pay attention to – the one that is really the newest of all and the most relevant to the events of 9/11 – is the balance between individuals and nation-states. Because globalization has brought down many of the walls that limited the movement and reach of people, and because it has simultaneously wired the world into networks, it gives more power to individuals to influence both markets and nation-states than at any other time in history. Whether by enabling people to use the Internet to communicate instantly at almost no cost over vast distances, or by enabling them to use the Web to transfer money or obtain weapons designs that normally would have been controlled by states, or by enabling them to go into a hardware store now and buy a five-hundred-dollar global positioning device, connected to a satellite, that can direct a hijacked airplane – globalization can be an incredible force-multiplier for individuals. Individuals can increasingly act on the world stage directly, unmediated by a state.
So you have today not only a superpower, not only Supermarkets, but also what I call “super-empowered individuals.” Some of these super-empowered individuals are quite angry, some of them quite wonderful – but all of them are now able to act much more directly and much more powerfully on the world stage.
Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States in the late 1990s. After he organized the bombing of two American embassies in Africa, the U.S. Air Force retaliated with a cruise missile attack on his bases in Afghanistan as though he were another nation-state. Think about that: on one day in 1998, the United States fired 75 cruise missiles at bin Laden. The United States fired 75 cruise missiles, at $1 million apiece, at a person! That was the first battle in history between a superpower and a super-empowered angry man. September 11 was just the second such battle.
Jody Williams won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for helping to build an international coalition to bring about a treaty outlawing land mines. Although nearly 120 governments endorsed the treaty, it was opposed by Russia, China, and the United States. When Jody Williams was asked, “How did you do that? How did you organize one thousand different citizens’ groups and non governmental organizations on five continents to forge a treaty that was opposed by the major powers?” she had a very brief answer: “E-mail.” Jody Williams used e-mail and then networked world to super-empower herself.
Nation-states, and the American superpower in particular, are still hugely important today, but so too now are Supermarkets and super-empowered individuals. You will never understand the globalization system, or the front page of the morning paper – or 9/11 – unless you see each one as a complex interaction between all three of these actors: states bumping up against states, states bumping up against Supermarkets, and Supermarkets and states bumping up against super-empowered individuals – many of whom, unfortunately, are super-empowered angry men.
Works Cited
Friedman, Thomas L. “Prologue: The Super-Story.” Thomas L. Friedman. Thomas L. Friedman,
2002. Web. 14 Jan. 2010. http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/bookshelf/longitudes-
and-attitudes/prologue
What is Crowdsourcing?
Top ten crowdsourced funding platforms
February 8th, 2011 11:00 AMBy Rachel Signer
Whatever project you can dream up, there’s a crowdsourced funding platform out there for it. Entrepreneurs, investors, journalists, artists, environmentalists, educators, nonprofits and charities are using these sites to fundraise and turn their visions for social change into realities. These sites provide more than just a donor base — they create an online community of people who care about your cause and want to follow your progress.
1. spot.us is a funding platform for citizen journalism. Users can submit story tips, and journalists pitch their story ideas for funding. Reporters can also recruit users to help them with a story, which is later posted on the site. Reporters keep 90 percent of the revenue, the rest goes to site editors. If you’re low on cash but want to participate, you can support a story of your choice at no cost through earning points by taking a survey with a spot.us sponsor. The site hosts some excellent stories done by hardworking, independent investigative reporters.
2. 33needs is a web application that connects investors to small-scale entrepreneurs around the world. The investor receives 3% and 33needs receives 5% of the funding target for a project. The site helpfully divides up projects into categories such as “education,” “the planet,” “community,” and so on. It’s brand new, and looks like it’s off to a promising start.
3. Profounder aims to help entrepreneurs get a community to invest in their project, creating a support base in addition to bringing in money. The site’s team gives guidance on creating a fundraising pitch, managing investments and returns, and legal issues. Profounder’s blog illustrates various stories of helping small businesses expand and get their products to new markets.
4. Microplace is a Paypal-owned company that allows investors to put their money into projects that aim to alleviate poverty. Users create an account on MicroPlace like you would at any brokerage firm. Users then receive quarterly interest payments and portfolio statements. When an investment matures, users can either get their money back or roll it over into anther investment.
5. Kickstarter targets artists and entrepreneurs who need funding to bring their creative projects to life. Its use of video as a means of sharing projects makes it particularly fun and simple. A project cannot begin, and no credit cards are charged, until enough pledges have been made to reach the funding target, so as to discourage poorly-executed projects. Project creators inspire people to open their wallets by offering rewards, such as “thank you” mentions on their personal blogs, or products from their projects.
6. IndieGoGo, similar to Kickstarter, also caters to artists and creative entrepreneurs. What’s different here is that you can close a project before full funding, but the transaction fees also go up from 4% to 9%. Users can offer unique perks or tax deductions to contributors in lieu of offering profit, but always keep 100% ownership. IndieGogo benefits from an attractive, user-friendly site that makes it fun to browse through the projects.
7. Crowdrise allows you to support charities and volunteer organizations by voting for their projects on the site, donating money, or helping them fundraise. You can create a profile to help raise money for a charity, or join an existing project team. Crowdrise deducts 5% on donations made through the site and charges a $1 transaction fee for donations under $25 or a $2.50 transaction fee for donations $25 and over. Crowdrise already has 1.5 million charities on board.
8. Firstgiving helps organizations plan, execute, and measure successful online fundraising campaigns and events. Nonprofits can make a page to send to their supporters, or individuals can create a page to raise funds for an organization. With 8,000 organizations and 13 million online donors participating, and $1 billion raised online, Firstgiving’s services appear wide-reaching.
9 DonorsChoose allows teachers to solicit funding for specific needs in classrooms and schools. The site is well-organized, with tags for different kinds of projects, and it showcases quotes from donors about how good they feel after giving. Almost 7,000 donors have reached 45,000 students through funding over 1,000 projects on DonorsChoose.
10. ioby connects donors and volunteers to environmental projects in their neighborhoods to inspire new environmental knowledge and action in New York City. The site was founded on the principle that NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) beliefs can result in environmental hazards being pushed into low-income areas and communities of color. The site boasts of supporting innovative environmental projects like recycling and composting initiatives in New York City neighborhoods and schools, as well as street beautification, urban gardening, and park maintenance projects.
If we missed your favorite crowdsourced funding platform, leave it in the comments.
What is a Warrior?
Warriors are not what you think of as warriors. The warrior is not someone who fights….The warrior is one who sacrifices himself for the good of others. His task is to take care of the elderly, the defenseless, those who cannot provide for themselves, and above all, the children, the future of humanity.
-Sitting Bull
Clinton Global Initiative
Each year, CGI U hosts a meeting where students, national youth organizations, topic experts, and celebrities discuss solutions to pressing global issues. CGI U 2012 was held at the George Washington University, Washington, DC from March 30-April 1, 2012. At this meeting, nearly 1,200 attendees came together to make a difference in CGI U’s five focus areas: Education, Environment & Climate Change, Peace & Human Rights, Poverty Alleviation, and Public Health.
But CGI U is more than just an event. It is a growing community of young leaders who don’t just discuss the world’s challenges – they take real, concrete steps toward solving them. Throughout the year, and as a prerequisite of attending the CGI U meeting, students and youth organization directors develop their own Commitments to Action: a specific plan of action that addresses a pressing challenge on their campus, in their community, or in a different part of the world.
Commitments range from installing energy-efficient light bulbs to establishing campus bike share programs, from distributing life-saving water filtration kits to designing medical backpacks for nomadic doctors in Africa. Since the inaugural meeting in 2008, nearly 3,000 commitments have been made.
Throughout the year, students are also invited to join the CGI U campus representative network. Nearly 200 student representatives from over 25 countries are working together to spread the word about CGI U on their campuses. To learn about becoming a campus representative, click here.
CGI U is proof that young people have the power to make a significant impact by confronting some of the world’s most urgent challenges.
Teach for America -Free Peace Education Curriculum
Peace Education
If wars begin in the human mind, then it is through our minds – through education – that war can be vanquished by peace. At Teachers Without Borders, we believe that teachers can lead the way towards peace in their classrooms and communities. Our Peace Education Program is designed to help them in this pursuit. By providing teachers with a framework for peace education, we are contributing to the growing movement towards a global culture of peace.
Teachers Without Borders’ Introduction to Peace Education is a teacher professional development course that explores peace education in theory and practice. In addition to offering the course as an onsite workshop in various contexts around the world, we make it available as a free download or a free self-paced online course. We also offer this program as a paid online course. The paid version is led by experienced instructors and supported by mentors (to read more about the paid online course, please click here).
COMING SOON:
Our peace education program will be adopting the programs and content of Bridges To Understanding, an organization that enables teachers and students around the world to learn and connect through story-telling projects. Read more about this exciting, new initiative.
Snapshot of Peace Education Program
Teachers trained offline since November 2010: 112 – US (42), Canada (7), Mexico (155), Uganda (100), Democratic Republic of the Congo (35), Kenya (100), South Africa (100)
Teachers trained online since January 2011: 274
Downloads of program resources since November 2010: 14,040
Endorsements / Program Partners:
Democratic Republic of Congo: Association des Ami(e)s du Pere Tony (ASAPT),
Mexico: Baja California Department of Education; Lazaro Cardenas High School, Tijuana; Colegio Ingles, Saltillo
South Africa: Department of Education, Port Elizabeth
Uganda: Ministry of Education, Lira District; Foundation for Integral Rural Development
United States: University of San Diego School of Leadership and Education Sciences; The Metta Center; San Diego Early/Middle College
universaleducationforall 