Telling Philanthropy's Story

There are 717 community foundations in the United States making grants of about $4.6 billion in their communities. I know because it’s on the cover of a publication about community foundations.

What I don’t know is why anyone would care.

It’s not just that we should be talking about the impact that we have in our communities, the great work we do and support. It’s not that at all.

It’s literally a question of who cares about community foundations? It takes an unusual amount of self-absorption to get comfortable with the idea that a small set of obscure treasury regulations defines an inherently superior vehicle for philanthropy. In fact, I’m not sure community foundations are inherently better or worse as charitable giving vehicles, or more or less important than other forms of philanthropy to our communities.

And I run one.

Just imagine what the people who don’t run one think.

Read the rest of the Philanthropy article.

VoiceAmerica's 'What Matters' Radio Show Features BETF Executive Director Wayne Hicks

This blog is part of a web of social network platforms created by the BDPA Education and Technology Foundation (BETF) to spread the gospel of BDPA. We seek to increase brand awareness so that more people get active with BDPA programs and services around the nation.

I guess it's working!  Certified life coach Mary Beth Lodge saw the persistent information being shared by BETF and determined that we would be worthy of having as a guest on her VoiceAmerica Internet radio show, 'What Matters' in an episode title, Goals: Inspiration and Focus.   The is broadcast live on Wednesday, January 25 @ 9:00 AM ET ... re-broadcast again at 9:00 PM ET ... then available for *free* download via iTunes.

The promo for the show reads:

Discouraged about the impact you can have? Ever think that one person doesn’t have much influence? One person, focused and passionate, can make a tremendous difference! This week we are joined by R. Wayne Hicks, executive director of the BDPA Education and Technology Foundation. BDPA was founded in 1975 out of concern that minorities were not adequately represented in the workforce of the then emerging computer industry. BETF, the Education and Technology Foundation of BDPA is a 501(c)3 nonprofit charity established in 1992 to financially support student education and technology initiatives.

Wayne Hicks

An active leader in the organization since 1988, Wayne has followed his passion for education and applied his skill and dedication to expanding opportunities for disadvantaged youth across the country. Working at both the local and national level, Wayne is the embodiment of the ripple effect. Listen in and gain an inspiration for your own passion and purpose.

I suspect that the discussion will focus on the work that we're doing to raise funds for BDPA ... with an emphasis on our mission of education. I will explain to the listening audience the great works being done under the Student Information Technology Education & Scholarship (SITES) program umbrella. I will also talk about the great young people that BETF has been providing college scholarships over the recent years.

I found this video on Mary Beth's website and thought that you would enjoy it as well!






Anyhow, I hope that some of y'all find time to listen to the show live on Wednesday morning!

BDPA Adds Another Scholarship Fundraiser to Ed Norton's Crowdrise Platform

With all the hoopla of a Hollywood release – but with some of the Gen X slacker style of its founder – actor Edward Norton’s Crowdrise - a much-hyped blend of social media and star power aiming to be the next big fundraising and volunteering platform. The value prop is familiar: you make a profile, you create a campaign, get your friends to volunteer or give, promote on Twitter or Facebook and move up the leaderboards. And there are prizes galore for high-achieving campaigns, from sweatshirts to iPhones and Macs.

Read the rest of the article here.

Here are some BDPA-related fundraising projects currently on Crowdrise:

1. BDPA IT Corps (Global)
2. BDPA Virtual (Columbus) 
3. Brandon Berry Memorial Scholarship (Cincinnati)
4. Brandon Gardner Memorial Scholarship (Los Angeles)
5. Dr. Jesse Bemley Scholarships (Nationwide)
6. HSCC Scholarships (Baltimore)
7. HSCC Scholarships (Baton Rouge)
8. HSCC Scholarships (Charlotte)  
9. HSCC Scholarships (Chicago) 
10. HSCC Scholarships (Cleveland)     
11. HSCC Scholarships (Detroit)
12. HSCC Scholarships (Hartford)
13. HSCC Scholarships (Middle Tennessee) *NEW*



HSCC Middle Tennessee (2011)

14. HSCC Scholarships (New York) 
15. HSCC Scholarships (Philadelphia)
16. HSCC Scholarships (Richmond)
17. HSCC Scholarships (Triangle)  
18. SITES Scholarships (Atlanta) 
19. SITES Scholarships (Dallas)

Please visit the BDPA Foundation Crowdrise page if you have time or inclination!

Six Tips for Foundations to Engage Their Audiences with Social Media

Soulclap to Sophia Guevara for publishing the following article in Re: Philanthropy.

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When it comes to the use of social media, many foundations have decided to focus their efforts on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to spread their messages. With most of these activities focused on advertising, how can a foundation use this technology for meaningful audience engagement?

I recently interviewed Cindy Johanson, executive director of the George Lucas Educational Foundation. In this podcast interview, I note the success the organization has experienced with its YouTube channel and Facebook and Twitter accounts. I was impressed by the number of channel views and Twitter followers the foundation was able to amass as I knew of several larger foundations that had not experienced anything close to this kind of success. How then, was Johanson’s organization able to achieve this? Here are a few of her tips to help your foundation successfully engage its audience with social media:

1. Use social media to support the audience and the organization’s mission. Don’t use it just for “blatant promotion.”
2. Encourage more of your staff to take part in social media communication so that they all participate in the conversation.
3. Listen to your audience’s online conversations and be aware of any challenges that may arise. Take action to let your audience know that they are being heard.
4. Don’t use social media to hold a one-way conversation. Encourage two-way communication. Welcome your audience in a trusted way to encourage the conversation people want to have.
5. Be aware of individuals who use the social media channel in an inappropriate way (promoting products, etc.). Try to engage these people offline.
6. Know who your audience is and understand what they want from you. Don’t assume - communicate. Do your research and give them the information they need in a way that can promote action.

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Do any of these six tips appeal to you as you work to engage your organization's members and supporters within the social media world?

Facebook and Nonprofits: The Evolution Continues

Facebook isn’t the kind of company to stand still – and sometimes its changes (especially to privacy settings and navigation) can drive its power users crazy. That includes nonprofits, which have raced to embrace the “go where the crowd is” ethos of 500,000 million Facebook users. The latest changes are a case in point: the company is moving forcefully to impose its vision for a “social graph” to the rest of the web, encouraging sites to adopt its own tools to link users in an ever-widening network of personal choice. Hence, the suddenly ubiquitous “Like” button – including this site – and a quick move away from the “fans” and “pages” paradigm Facebook did such a great job of establishing. So, if you’ve put hundreds of hours into winning fans for your cause’s Facebook page, you might just sigh with digital frustration.

Read the rest of this onPhilanthropy story here.

BETF Media Kit (May 2010)

BDPA Education and Technology Foundation (BETF) is proud to share with you our 2010 Media Kit. Please review it and let us know what you think!

Media Kit for BDPA Education and Technology Foundation (May 2010)

View more documents from Wayne Hicks.

Our thanks to BETF volunteer Martin Lindsey for the time, talent and effort that he put into creating this Media Kit for us!

Get More Tangible and Impact-Focused

Are you having a rough time with your fundraising this year? The economic tsunami that hit America over the past 18 months or so put a hurt on BDPA Education and Technology Foundation (BETF) fundraising. That is why I am reading as many fundraising tips as I can. Network For Good (NFG) is a fertile source of ideas ... especially in their downloadable E-book.

Here is a very useful tip that may help your BDPA chapter or other nonprofit organization with fundraising efforts this year:

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Here is another paradigm shift required this year: From need to impact.

Fundraising is not about what you need. Really. It is about what the donor - through you - can achieve.

Everyone knows you need money. So do the other 1.8 million nonprofits in the United States - as do the millions more around the world. If that's all you've got to say, you are just another organization with yet another appeal.

What is special about you? The answer can't simply be that your programs need support. It must be that with your donor, together you can achieve a difference that no one else can.

We should stop building our case for support around a need-based tax categorization and instead talk about how we make a difference.

So how do we talk about impact?

1. By talking about individuals - one person or animal at a time. Avoid talking about massive numbers, mind-numbing statistics, or intangible outcomes. (There is plenty of research on why this is ineffective in conveying impact and motivating giving and it's laid out in Network for Good's recent eBook, Homer Simpson for Nonprofits: How People Really Think and What It Means to Your Cause.) Telling individual success stories will give people the emotional connection to your work that is so essential to the donor relationship.
2. Online tools, from websites to Twitter, can be especially helpful in making that individual connection and showing the impact of your work.
3. On your website, Facebook page, eNews and everywhere else, put these individual stories front and center. Then, to the side, provide a quick glance into how much of your donors' funds is going to that human impact - i.e., your programs.

The bottom line: Do the best job you can showing where the money goes, in a human, authentic, and transparent way -- in all your outreach online.

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This tip is an eye-opener for me. I have alot of research on the critical shortages of African Americans in the IT industry from the classroom to the boardroom. However, I can see now that I need to put more attention into sharing the human stories of success that result from BETF scholarships and BETF funding.

What thoughts or ideas did this blog post bring to you?

Rethink and Restructure Your Donor Relationships

BDPA Education and Technology Foundation (BETF) seeks continuous improvement. We have to improve if we hope to raise funds necessary to provide scholarships and pay for technology-based education programs around the country. As such, I thought that this article by the folks at Network For Good (NFG) was excellent.

If you lead a BDPA chapter or other nonprofit organization then I encourage you to download the NFG e-book and enjoy the following tip:

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The biggest thing that needs to change for nonprofit organizations this year is how we think about our donors. We are in the midst of an enormous generational shift that has major implications for our work. The Greatest Generation of older, civic-minded Americans who wrote checks out of a sense of duty and trusted charities to use their donations wisely is moving on. The torch has passed to a far more demanding series of donors, who view their giving as an investment, and want to be informed of the progress.

That means it's not enough to declare a need and send a thank-you.

Consider how to reorganize your fundraising efforts with a focus on the donor experience at each touch point with your organization. Here are some steps to take:

1. Have a Be Your Donor Day. Go to your website. As the donor, ask yourself: Is it apparent what your organization does? Do you see something that forges an emotional connection? Are there tools to share what you are seeing via social networks, right on the home page? Are the voices of donors and supporters clear in the content? Does the website feel like a community or a brochure?
2. Donate online and offline. How and when are you thanked? What happens after that? Call information to ask for your 800 number and your local number. Call both and see what happens. Sign up for e-News. Tweet your support. What happens?
3. Do a "walk" online and in the shoes of your donor at least one once each quarter. It will surprise and perhaps horrify you. That's okay. It will very quickly uncover where you are failing to make the donor feel amazing about his or her support of your organization - and supply the insight needed to improve the situation.
4. Pay particular attention to your online tools. Are you using them to enhance the donor experience or are they lacking? If they don't work well, fix them or stop using them.

Here's the good news: If you make your donors feel appreciated through your website, you will truly stand out. Most nonprofits aren't focused on their donor experience online. When you start doing that, you will be a wonderful anomaly. You will delight, engage, and entrance the people you want to reach.

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I'm looking for one or more volunteers that may want to work with me to implement these ideas for BETF. Interested?

Can BETF Share Its Message via YouTube?

YouTube is a powerful communication vehicle. BDPA Education and Technology Foundation (BETF) wants to figure out a way to leverage YouTube to broadcast our message to current and future donors. Ura Puranda is leading our efforts in this area. This slideshow provides an overview of the YouTube project that Ura is leading for us:

BETF: YouTube Project Overview from Entrepreneurial Engagement Ohio

We are novices in this arena. Please contact us if you have suggestions or ideas for us to consider.

Twitter Presents a Chance for Savvy Charities to Reach More People

Late one Friday afternoon this fall, Matt Flannery, the co-founder of Kiva.org, posted a message on Twitter: "It seems like my Twitter account is getting attacked by spam. 500 new followers a minute. Anyone else experiencing this?"

In fact, a small group of people who use Twitter to talk about philanthropy had also been inundated with followers. But the reason for the instant increase wasn't anything as spurious as a spam attack. All the people who suddenly attracted new followers had just been added to Twitter's official "suggested users" list of people worth following. Traditionally, Twitter's suggestions have included celebrities like Al Gore, Shaquille O'Neal, and Oprah Winfrey, so adding the likes of Matt Flannery and other stars of the philanthropy world represents a big shift.

Read the rest of the Chronicle of Philanthropy article here.

Cause Marketing Still Bringing In Big Bucks

Despite the ailing U.S. economy, companies in North America are expected to spend $1.55 billion on cause partnerships during 2009, a 2.2 percent increase from the $1.52 billion invested in those programs during 2008, according to Chicago-based IEG, LLC. The amount spent in 2007 was $1.44 billion, according to IEG.

Read the rest of The NonProfit Times article here.