Global+Greengrants+Fund+-+Group+1


 * Global Greengrants Fund**

Participant Name: Hilary Byerly Web Site: http://www.greengrants.org Email: hilary@greengrants.org Phone: 303-939-9866

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/globalgreengrantsfund Blog: http://www.greengrants.org/news-and-resources YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/greengrants Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/greengrantsfund LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/global-greengrants-fund
 * Social Media Presences**

June, 2011
 * Facebook Benchmarking**

Fans: 1610 Total Posts: 5 Total Comments: 0 Comments per Post: 0


 * Wiki Journal (please jot down your "next action" and any high level insights you gained from session or questions you have as you implement your homework)**

//11:00 am PST - 2:00 pm EST// This one-hour session will introduce the program, expectations, and provide time for questions. Group 1A Group 1B Resources and Materials
 * July 29, 2011:** **Orientation**

//Homework: Why do you want to improve your organization's practice on Facebook?// Global Greengrants Fund seeks to improve our practice on Facebook because it's an interactive, two-way space unlike any other that we're a part of. We'd love to create more dialogue between our donors, grantees, and other like-minded individuals and organizations. What's more, we see Facebook (and Twitter) as an opportunity to spread the word about our mission and our grantees. The stories of our grantees are rarely present in mainstream news--they often take place in remote regions of the world or are the 'David' in a David v. Goliath struggle--so Facebook is a place where we can highlight those stories, struggles, and successes. From a development perspective, the most active Facebook demographic somewhat parallels our target donor audience, so it's can be a great tool to steward donors by showing the impact of their donations and where there's more need.

August 4, 2011: How To Create a Facebook culture inside your organization
 * //Group 1A: 11:00 am PST - 2:00 pm EST//**
 * //Group 1B: 1:00 pm PST - 4:00 pm EST//**

**Resources and Materials**

I love the concept of creating a 'social culture' within our organization. Our social media presence started with me two years ago as an intern, and I continue (for now) to be the only staff member posting and tweeting. As such, I've dragged my feet on instituting a social media policy because it never seemed relevant. Yet, everyone who's online is accountable, and it's important to set clear parameters. In addition, I've realized that institutionalizing policies and guidelines could foster more engagement from my coworkers. There has traditionally been minimal interest among my colleagues in acknowledging or contributing to our online presence. I need to take the initiative to engage them. First, by sharing a social media policy that helps everyone recognize how interconnected everything is (even their personal use of these tools). Then, with well-defined policies that hold the weight of other employee guidelines, we may see a shift in how people view our social media activity altogether.
 * Reflections **


 * Next Actions**
 * Add community guidelines to our fan page
 * Refine social media policy to be relevant and useful, then actually make moves to get management approval and share with staff

We've known for a long time that it was a best practice to have a social media policy, but only just drafted something a couple months ago (actually, in anticipation of this peer exchange). We used a few examples, namely Intel and Environmental Defense Fund (which they seem to have removed from their site) and drafted a document that covers most of the bases, but also has the right tone for our organizational culture. However, this document is fairly long (8 pgs), and it will probably miss the mark with our staff because they likely won't read it. Ford’s social media policy is a great example because it's short and easy to read; it's a straightforward outline for what to do. Now we need to take the policy we currently have and break it down to something that resembles Ford's.
 * Homework: Thoughts about creating a social media policy** (see also, Reflections)

Additionally, because we are a grantmaking intermediary, we have a unique set of 'how do I deal with you?' commenters. Grantseekers often contact us through Facebook posts and blog comments, but we, as an organization, don't have a really genuine, useful response (besides "we don't take unsolicited grant requests"). We need to develop some way to address those comments in a respectful and helpful manner, and that absolutely needs to be in our social media policy.

Once these two items are done, the next step is to actually implement the policy. I mentioned that we've had one for a couple months, but it's simply sat in some remote Social Media folder on our server. Time to put that baby to use! As for capacity... that's a whole other can of worms.

August 26, 2011: SMART objectives and measurement strategy **Resources and Materials**
 * //Group 1A: 11:00 am PST - 2:00 pm EST//**
 * //Group 1B: 1:00 pm PST - 4:00 pm EST//**

We'd like to use our FB page as a way to raise awareness about environmental justice issues, about our work, and about the work of our grantees. We're currently using Facebook Insights to measure our page's performance. We're looking at the following each month: total # of likes, # of new likes, %growth in likes, postviews, post feedback, and # of our own posts. We compared our results to those of other non-profits using the 2011 eNonprofit Benchmarking Study.
 * Homework**:


 * Goals/Objectives for the next year:**
 * Grow our fans by 9% each month;
 * Post to FB at least 3 times a week
 * Post at least one picture or video a month
 * Post at least one question or survey a month
 * Post our newsletter each month
 * Post donation widget to correspond with each theme each month
 * Increase our monthly post feedback to at least 35 per month by the Dec 2011

September 23, 2011: Recruitment and Engagement **Resources and Materials**
 * //Group 1A: 11:00 am PST - 2:00 pm EST//**
 * //Group 1B: 1:00 pm PST - 4:00 pm EST//**

This month we tried asking a few questions with mild success. We noticed the questions that got the most responses were opinion-based, letting the supporters share their passions. It seems, though, we get better engagement on posts that are not questions (i.e. photos, blog posts). We also promoted our page through our twitter page, again, with mild success. We added a link to our page in all the staff’s email signatures which seems to have positively impacted our stats. Next week we’ll be launching our first Facebook ad, which we hope will be successful. Our most success has come from the Care2 campaign we just ran. In our response email, we added a “like us on Facebook” button, and got a number of likes through that outreach.
 * Homework:**

October 28, 2011: Content Strategy **Resources and Materials** For each month, we have focus areas, which coincide with all of our communications outreach. In October we focused on Mining and Oil and this month we're focusing on Food and Agriculture. Having these guiding themes has made it easier to find content for our page, because it narrows the focus. Although we used to post 2 or 3 times a day, we have limited ourselves to 1 time a day (unless some special circumstances arises). Each week, we post a "Project of the Week" which includes a picture and short description of one of our grantees. On Wednesdays, we post our blog and post a link to it on our page. The other days are filled with links to interesting news stories or tips our supporters can use, or sometimes shares from other pages. We save the least interesting content for the weekends, because we get many fewer users on those days. We have also linked to at least 2 petitions, which have gotten good response through a lot of shares and likes. Also, the first day of the month, we announce our theme and link to our donation page. The last day of the month, we close out the theme and link to a related story or video. Once a month, we also link to our latest monthly enews. Our "Projects of the Day" get the best engagement by far, because they show an image and show people directly what our org is about. We used to post one project a day, but noticed that was overkill, so we pulled back. Keeping it to once a week has made the posts much more successful. With the new insights, we have had to decide what information we are going to track and when. We decided on the following each month (taking the advice that was in the blogosphere): Total # of likes: 1857 % growth in likes: 6.8% Avg weekly reach (similar to impressions/views): 16,920 Avg weekly “talking about us” (engagement/feedback): 50
 * //Group 1A: 11:00 am PST - 2:00 pm EST//**
 * //Group 1B: 1:00 pm PST - 4:00 pm EST//**
 * October:**
 * 1) of new likes: 119
 * 1) of posts: 30

November 18, 2011: Brand Ambassadors **Resources and Materials**
 * //Group 1A: 11:00 am PST - 2:00 pm EST//**
 * //Group 1B: 1:00 pm PST - 4:00 pm EST'//**

December 16, 2011: Learning from Measurement **Resources and Materials**
 * //Group 1A: 11:00 am PST - 2:00 pm EST//**
 * //Group 1B: 1:00 pm PST - 4:00 pm EST//**

January 6, 2011: Learning Culmination** //Group 1A: 11:00 am PST - 2:00 pm EST// //Group 1B: 1:00 pm PST - 4:00 pm EST// Resources and Materials