Group+2+Families+USA


 * Families USA**

Participant Name: Justin Kolikof Web Site: http://www.standupforhealthcare.org Email: jkolikof@familiesusa.org Phone: 202-628-3030


 * Social Media Presences**

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Families-USAs-Stand-Up-for-Health-Care/129914120385683?ref=ts Blog: http://www.standupforhealthcare.org/blog YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/FamiliesUSAYT Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/FamiliesUSA LinkedIn: Listening:

After each session, use the wiki journal to jot down key takeaways, ahas, next action steps, or questions.
 * Wiki Journal**

Orientation: Overview of the Peer Exchange and answer questions July 13, 2011 at 11:00 am PST/ 2:00 EST

Session 1: Assessing Your Networked Nonprofit Maturity of Practice July 28 at 11:00 am PST/ 2:00 EST

Session 2: Align Social Media Measurement With Results August 25 at 11:00 am PST/ 2:00 EST

__DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT__

Given the growth and popularity of Twitter, coupled with the increased media attention afforded the platform, Families USA sought to leverage Twitter to support advocacy efforts around the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, and Medicare. To that end, we have developed the first of its kind Twitter tool.

Similar to traditional email-based petitions, our tool allows citizens to enter their zip code and then target all of their elected officials – state representative, state senator, U.S. representative, U.S. senators, attorney general, and governor – with a protect health care message through Twitter.

The tool is now live on the Stand Up for Health Care microsite at www.standupforhealthcare.org/tweet.

__GOALS__

1) Our tool is connected to an act.ly petition, one of our goals is to become the highest performing Twitter-based petition of all time. 2) Related, we want to leverage successes with the act.ly petition to generate earned media and show how much grassroots support there is for these health care programs. 3) We also wanted to grow our social media networks (Facebook and Twitter) through promotion of the tool. 4) We have developed "share" code which allows groups to embed the tool on their sites and blogs. We want groups to take advantage of this embed code and help support / participate in this effort.

__KEY PERFORMANCE METRICS__

1) 10,500 act.ly petition signatures 2) 10-15 earned media stories around the effort 3) Grow our Facebook network to 10,000 fans and our Twitter list to 5,000 fans. 4) 25 groups embed the tool on their websites or blogs.

__CHALLENGES__

1) Twitter (act.ly) measurement is imperfect. We know for a fact that act.ly's crawlers are not capturing every signature on our petition, hindering our effort. 2) It is difficult to ascribe growth of our networks to any one specific effort, unlike with email based advocacy campaigns. 3) It is also difficult to track how many groups have leveraged the embed code.

__TOOLS FOR THE JOB__

We have to rely on act.ly to track petition signatures. We also use Thrive to manage our social networks and can make reasonable inferences on the cause of growth.

Session 3: Why Does Bad Measurement Practice Happen To Good Nonprofits? September 22 at 11:00 am PST/ 2:00 EST

Session 4: Benchmarking: Networked Nonprofits Measure Social Media in Context October 27 at 11:00 am PST/ 2:00 EST

Session 5: Overview of Measurement Tools November 17 at 11:00 am PST/ 2:00 EST

Session 6: Transform Data into Wisdom and Reporting December 15 at 11:00 am PST/ 2:00 EST

Session 7: Reflection and Reiteration January 5 at 11:00 am PST/ 2:00 EST

Learning Culmination January 12 at 11:00 am PST/ 2:00 EST This session will be a “virtual party” to celebration the completion of the program and for participants to share what they learned through their action learning projects.