Here is a quick summary of some learnings from the Facebook DC (a page on FB) held a live interview with three very socially active non-profits with Clay Dunn from Share Our Strength, Sarah Koch from Causes and, part of a favorite page for me – Wendy Harman from the American Red Cross.

[ American Red Cross is a page with social media activities I greatly admire - see my post " The new home page of 2011 is the tab in Facebook".]

Although I caught only the second half of the presentation (stay tuned for replay link), there were some key messages delivered:

1. Showing the impact that the donations make is valuable today as audiences are exposed to a lot of donation asks.

2.  Don’t forget to engage with those people who are supporting the charity.  Allow them [I would say give them permission - figuratively] to submit photos related to the charity so that they feel they are part of a group that does something.

3. Consider how you use social media for “digital volunteerism” – a new term that I was not aware of.  How do you allow volunteers to contribute and support digitally?

4.  Allow for micro payments which have been easy asks but in volume contributes quite a bit.

5.  consider enabling people, either through communication or online tools, to form a donation wish and then solicit friends to help achieve that goal.  This is really the door-to-door solicitation taken online.  This may sound obvious but in the design of online experiences – this is a functionality to include.

For more tips on using social media for social good – consider reading a post on “The Science of Sharing“

I’d also like to point out that Facebook itself does a good job of parsing its audiences into a number of facebook pages and then markets events and information across all groups.  I believe this is a good model for organizations that have non-profit groups as a secondary organization.

Scotiabank BuskerFest starts this Thursday Aug. 27th at noon.

I’m elated to have won Epilepsy Toronto as a new client.   My team and I  are responsible for the social media strategy, planning & execution for Scotiabank’s BuskerFest 2009 – planned for Thursday, August 27 thru to Sunday, August 30th at the St Lawrence Market neighbourhood in Toronto.   [Become a FAN on the Scotiabank BuskerFest Facebook Page or join our twitter @buskerfestTO and #BFTO]

Certainly, coming onboard in July for an August festival has a lot of challenges [and so technically, I call this a social networking marketing plan not social media due to what makes for a reasonable focus in a short time period] and yet, I really heartily applaud Epilepsy Toronto.   They are open minded, familiar with social media, time and resource crunched but willing and interested to barrel forth into new territory.  The leadership team also asks very good questions around our strategies and initiatives – which always makes for interesting work.

Being a time sensitive event – BuskerFest will provide a fast and furious window of learning and experience for an organization that is interested in adopting more social media corporately.   If it weren’t for a major event – social media/networking corporate adoption would plug along much slower.   As part of our path, we have acknowledged there will be collective learning internally, among partners, among all of us.  (It feels like early days web 1999!)  One of our marketing goals, afterall, is to set Epilepsy Toronto up for 2010.

I’m pretty pleased with our plans for creating excitement for social media with Epilepsy Toronto’s volunteers – detailed on the facebook fan pages.

Epilepsy Toronto is currently offering its Secondary School BuskerFest volunteers up to 34 hours of community involvement for those who train and work shifts at the BuskerFest event.

We are now offering an additional 6 hour credit (to get students to the full 40 hour requirement) by introducing social media volunteer assignments.

As a member of our social media team, you get:
• Mentorship from a leading social media industry expert
• Training on ‘writing for social media’
• Identification as an exclusive member of the BuskerFest official social team
• Community involvement meeting a team of other secondary student volunteers from across the city.
• Automatic entry into the BuskerFest citizen journalist contest recognizing the most influential social media marketers/journalists.

For me – I’m really excited about the mentorship opportunities.  I’m not talking about mentorship from myself – I’ll do my fair share, of course – but because I have a great social media network and its all about using the network, I’m hoping I can pair up students producing youtube videos with online video social media experts, or facebook enthusiasts with facebook gurus, etc.   The possibilities would just tickle a match maker.

I’ve been volunteering/consulting in social recruiting lately – a high demand and growing area – playing both sides of the fence between consulting with HR/recruiters & execs and volunteering with the painfully transitioned in Toronto.   I wanted to offer suggestions to those who choose not to open up their chest cavity and explain why they are out of work…  AND give a new blog post to the 405 club:  NYC’s official unemployment network who’ve just asked me to be a contributing blogger to the site. <blush>

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Perception is Reality

Picture it – you’re sitting in the first interview you’ve managed to get in weeks, its a job that matches your working desires and the promise of pay is in line with your old self – the one that used to work.

The fumble you are trying to avoid is not whether or not you qualify for  the job.  NOOOO its whether or not to pretend that you are not the active job searcher you are.   Damn the stigma of being an active job seeker.

I touched on this in an earlier blog post - social recruiting 2.0.   Quickly – recruiters and hr managers break job searchers into three main groups -

1. non-seekers – those who have a job who aren’t looking,
2. passive job searchers – have a job and are mildly searching, and
3. active job searchers – say no more.

Active job searchers are, at times, avoided under the belief they constitute the undesirable; the belief that they will jump at any job opportunity – qualified or not,  suitable or not and desert jobs when they find what they really want.   I’m sure this stigma is grounded in some reality and yet, in a great recession, employers should not ignore quality candidates regardless of situation.  [Excellent article on out of work stigma fading.]

So.. back to business – HOW TO PRETEND YOU AREN’T ACTIVELY SEARCHING WHEN YOU ARE:

• Build your own website – not a online resume, a small business site.  Consider using free blog publishing to get up and running fast.
• Invest in your own domain name.   I wouldn’t necessarily go with your personal name as a domain but if you can’t dream up something cheap and available as a .com, then go for it.  Some instructions in a previous “how to” blog post of mine using godaddy.
• Volunteer in a relevant capacity and make an “in-kind” deal allowing yourself to claim the organization as a client, and get website or other exposure for your business.
• Make the bloody most of every volunteer/contract experience – blog about it, status update it, twitter it if you are on twitter, talk about it.  Use popular tag words in your blog title post so that your post gets auto pulled into silly blogs that add posts based on key word terms rather than content.
• Update all social networking sites to your new business - linkedin, etc.  [I'm assuming here you are on linkedin.. and you should be]
• Use a powerful signature linking back to profiles, @twitters or blog posts.  Start commenting as the president and chief pipeline filler in relevant forums, questions & answers paying attention to well attended blogs, websites, facebook fan pages or linkedin discussions as they will feed back traffic through the comments you make.
• Cross pollinate your social networks.  Add linkedin applications that display your blog in your linkedin e.g. wordpress app, then add linkedin badges to your blog.

At the end of the day – an hr mgr and recruiter will still ask you why you are applying for full time moving away from your business.    My response has always been about the opportunity.  Personally, its hard to fill a pipeline as a small business and work on it.  But being committed to playing in a field you love means that you may have to take on different roles to do it.  Some of those roles are full time – others are contract and others are volunteer work.

Good luck.