What the hell is a Tweetup?

Preston Tweetup in action

I thought I’d take the question above as a starting point. A Tweetup is a new concept and it’s something that is really starting to catch-on in some places.

I organised and hosted Preston’s first Tweetup just over a week ago and it was a roaring success. We had nearly 40 people in the room, many of them with wireless enabled laptops and mobiles, all contributing to a discussion on one topic.

The idea for a Tweetup is that instead of having a networking event or discussion where the conversation is completely physical you also have a virtual conversation going on. Bear with me, it does make sense. The structure of the event is an opening preamble and then a topic is discussed by the people in the room – often splitting off into separate groups. This makes it easier to manage.

For example, at the Preston Tweetup we were discussing the Preston Guild in 2012 and how the web can be used in it.

The discussions were flowing around the tables but also on twitter, take a look at the #prestontweetup hashtag feed and you can see all the good stuff that was coming out of people chatting about the topic. Yes, some of it went off on tangents – but that happens with any discussions.

The best thing about the Tweetup was that as an organiser I was getting instant feedback. If there was a problem with something I could pick up on it straight away by watching the tweets. I could also easily collect information after the event and condense it.

This backchannel conversation was incredibly useful and exciting. It also allowed some great interaction between the groups, so that people might take a question asked by one group and explore it and the then fling some more questions back out into the twitter stream for other groups to consider. There was a fantastic collaborative environment at the event.

So, I would really suggest giving a Tweetup a try. You don’t need 40 people there, maybe just 5, but get going with it and see what happens. And if you’re in the education or conference/networking sectors, you need to be on this. Doing it. Making it happen.

How Twitter could be used for charity fundraising

Online fundraising is becoming more and more popular, replacing old style fundraising, but can Twitter play a part?

Attended the second Not For Profit Tweetup (#NFPTweetup) last night at Christian Aid’s head office in Waterloo. It was excellent, although the lack of free wi-fi access was disappointing (it being a tweetup and all).

The night started with Rachel Beer chairing a presentation where slides were presented about what Twitter meant to some of the people in attendance from the third sector and also some of those who weren’t in the audience but who had contributed virtually.

The general theme was that Twitter was a very useful tool, a conversation tool and a way to ‘humanise’ the organisation and not just hide behind a corporate shield.

We then broke off into groups and my group was charged with the title of ‘How can twitter be used for fundraising?’.

Here’s our key findings and ideas, and the below is some of the discussion that took place:

- Use Twitter to tell stories and then link off to a chance to donate
- ‘Friendraising’ and asking for favours on Twitter is often more powerful than asking for money or ask for content for existing media (photos, videos, guest blog posts, expert comment, ideas etc)
- Feature your community fundraisers and their efforts via your Twitter feed (this can act as a reward for those who go the extra mile), but only feature the more unusual or large-scale efforts rather than every Tom, Dick and Harriet
- Teach community fundraisers about how to use Twitter and other social media tools, as well as sites such as Justgiving and Bmycharity, to increase their donations and online awareness of fundraising effort
- Don’t abuse your Twitter following by always asking for donations
- Measurement will be needed to prove ROT (Return on Tweeting) in relation to fundraising efforts
- Setup up specific Twitter accounts for certain appeals and use these to promote the appeal, rather than featuring them all on your charity’s main Twitter account
- Twitter itself needs to fundraise to ensure long-term survival

Our first question to everyone around the table was ‘Have you used twitter for fundraising?’ and the answer was a resounding, ‘Not yet, but we’d quite like to know how and whether anyone else is doing it.’

One person in the group then contributed that they felt it would be a good way of raising small amounts of money for a specific cause, but this was countered by another group member who felt that the success of Twestival showed that large amounts could be gathered via Twitter and events organised around it.

We then discussed why it was that big charities and big appeals didn’t seem to be using Twitter as a fundraising tool but that individuals and smaller charities were. Everyone felt this was because it was easier for an individual and smaller organisations to adapt and use a tool such as Twitter where as larger organisations felt there were too many hoops and risks with using it.

We had Alex from Dogs Trust in our group and she contributed about how the charity had been using Twitter heaving. They now had around 2,200 followers and that they hadn’t actively fundraised for their appeals through Twitter but that they had promoted some of the fundraising activities of their supporters via their Twitter feed.

This led to a discussion about who you should follow and Alex commented that they were selective about who they followed and followed back. They don’t auto-follow back, preferring to weed out the spammers themselves. It was felt that asking for money via Twitter wouldn’t be right yet as they were still building their community but they had successfully used Twitter to ask for non-financial related activities – re-homing a dog, voluntary acts and time from supporters.

This led to a discussion about whether Twitter was a fundraising tool or whether it was ‘friendraising’. A tool to raise awareness of what you do and connect with supporters and then push them off somewhere else to donate, rather than potentially contaminate your Twitter following by asking them for donations to an appeal.

Many also felt it would be worthwhile if Twitter was to be used for fundraising that a profile on Twitter be setup for specific appeals e.g. twitter.com/savethewhiterhinoappeal and then people would know what to expect from this Twitter feed and it helped make people’s expectations clear. The issue of brand protection was also raised, charities even if they aren’t planning to use Twitter for an appeal should register the Twitter URL for their appeal just in case someone else does and pretends to be them!

Fundraising guru Howard Lake was also in our group and he added some insight into how Twestival had raised money for charity:water and the charity hadn’t actually asked to be involved – they were selected.

We were lucky enough to have Ben from Bmycharity in our group and the discussion led us on to how sites such as Bmycharity and Justgiving were experiencing surges in traffic (albeit from a small base to start with) from Twitter to their fundraising profile pages. He also commented that they were very interested in Twitter and its growing popularity and were looking at ways of incorporating more Twitter related activity and feeds into their profile pages.

We then discussed that perhaps Twitter was more of a tool for community fundraisers than for charities themselves, but charities could play a part by promoting the most interesting fundraising events/profiles through twitter to generate traffic and donations on profile pages. An interesting point was raised that charities had to be careful not to over-promote their fundraisers and this was the online equivalent of someone shaking a tin in your face and asking for 50p every 2 minutes.

Ben from Bmycharity chipped in at this point with a great example of how they had used Twitter to promote the more ‘unusual’ of their fundraisers. He spoke about how a woman was going from Lands End to John O’Groats in a powered wheelchair, but as a twist was offering the chance for two able-bodied people to join her on her trip. They found that by using Twitter to promote this the traffic to the profile page increased and potentially the donations increased.

This led to a debate about how the impact of Twitter on fundraisers could be measured. Someone needs to come up with a measurement for ‘Return on Tweet (ROT)’. It would be handy if there was a bit of code added to links put into a Tweet that tracked if a user went through to a specific page and then carried on to donate to the appeal/fundraising effort. This could then help charities say ‘we tweeted 20 times about this appeal and 46 people clicked through and 27 people donated a total of £256.70′.

We then discussed how charities need to do more to educate their community fundraisers about how to use online tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Justgiving, Bmycharity and others to maximise their fundraising efforts. This could be through running drop-in sessions (real or virtual) for community fundraisers and creating an online resource in a community fundraiser community site or on the charities own website (something like the Get Involve section) to teach people about the tools.

Finally, we discussed Twitter’s growing popularity and usage levels. Everyone was very excited about the potential for it and the growing uptake but there were notes of caution about whether it could survive long-term on just venture capital alone. Twitter needs to fundraise to ensure that it survives and this could be done through advertising (adverts that respond to what you’re tweeting about down the side of the twitter feed) or levying a charge at premium users.

There were more ideas and discussions than this but hopefully this is a useful snapshot of what our group discussed and I’d like to thank all those who took part it was great to hear everyone’s comments and find out what their charities were up to online.

I’d be interested to know what you think, can Twitter be used for fundraising? Is it mainstream enough to be counted as a viable marketing tool?

AMSU web development team: meeting one: ideas, ideas and more ideas

pad ready for amsu web ideas

In December I volunteered myself for the Association of Managers in Students’ Unions (AMSU) web development team – with a healthy shove in the right direction from Jaki Booth (trustee of AMSU). It’s a voluntary position and there’s three of us altogether who will be meeting to help AMSU develop its web presences and putting our plans into action. It’s a voluntary position.

I travelled down to Birmingham on Thursday 29th January not really sure what to expect. I knew there was a rough agenda ahead of us (discuss how crap AMSU’s old website had been, what was happening with the NUS Extranet and AMSU and potentially discuss some new ideas). Arrived at Birmingham City University Students’ Union to join in the #bcutweetup and then my fellow volunteers arrived on the AMSU web development team.

The first is Andy Parsons, chief executive at Loughborough Students’ Union, and the other is John Wordsworth, representation and democracy manager at Exeter Guild. So north, south and centre were combining to see if our collected minds could figure out the best way for AMSU to progress on the web.

The laptops were flipped open, the wireless eventually connected (I was borrowing Jaki’s laptop) and Andy fired up his ace MindMap sofware (John and I massively impressed by this, no wonder Loughboroguh is consistently rated as one of the top Union’s in the UK!).

We started out by describing what we thought AMSU itself should be – a place for all staff in Students’ Unions, not just general managers/chief executives – to find resources and the opportunity to explore new ideas and share best practice.

We discussed what we were up to at our respective unions with respect to the web, and it was amazing all the stuff that’s going on (from John handcoding an elections voting system at Exeter, to me starting work on an elections interactive facebook application and Andy enjoying the benefits of Warwick Union’s MSL system).

andy parsons fires up the mindmap

Down to the nitty gritty and it was decided that we needed to go open source with a lot of AMSU stuff. There are some AMSU gems that we needed to keep from the old web presences, such as the resource library, jobs sections and agenda magazine. But we needed to expand the content around these – for example getting the resource library tagged up to allow easy searching, moving agenda magazine to more of a blog format and making the jobs section easily searchable.

The topic of digital literacy came up again, and we discussed how AMSU could have a role to play in helping Students’ Unions to understand how web 2.0 tools can be used to improve the organisation and how it operates.

We came away buzzing with loads of great ideas to really push AMSU forward and allow it to re-connect with a lot of its members. We’ll be working up our ideas ready for an online meeting (we’re going to try meeting via Skype) in February and then a further meeting in March to investigate the MSL system that now powers the content management system of the new AMSU site.

It was a great experience to bounce ideas around with John and Andy and I’m looking forward to working on the project over the coming months.

The Big Challenge – chance for 16-25 year olds with ideas

Had this sent through from someone I attended the Common Purpose Frontrunner programme with today, she works for the excellent UnLtd:

“ONE WEEK TO GO…!

The Big Challenge competition is closing to applications on January 12th 2009!!

The Big Challenge competition is only open for one more week to any 16-25 year old who has a big idea for a project or campaign that helps other young people lead more positive and healthy lives. There is £60 000 to be won for a number of inspiring project ideas that will make a real difference to young people’s lives. Winners will have their project costs paid for along with support and mentoring to carry out their ideas.

Applications must focus on one of these 4 areas:

· Drugs, sex and alcohol

· Sustainable living

· Gang culture

· Healthy living

Visit – www.bigchallenge.org.uk where you can apply, find out about volunteer opportunities, vote for your favourite project idea (between Feb 2nd and 9th) and read the applications that have been submitted so far!

Your Life, Your Decision, Your Challenge.

What are you waiting for?”

So if you’re between 16 and 25, reading this, have an idea in one of those four areas. What are you waiting for? Go pitch!

In praise of Last FM’s ‘Best of 2008′

Really liking the ‘Best of 2008′ that Last FM have just released. It feels like a magazine when you click onto it, apart from instead of someone, somewhere, deciding what is the best single of the year – it’s the listeners.

I like the layout. I like the idea. And it’s interesting that Last FM is creating editorial content through its users. There’s a biog for each act, almost verging on comment in places, and then there’s some multimedia content with videos of the acts. And to be able to listen to the ‘Best of 2008′ radio – excellent.

What could the third sector learn from this? Creating a presence for the ‘end of year’ is a desirable thing. List your achievements, show off what you’ve done and after all everyone loves an end of year list.

How do Students’ Union’s respond to a recession?

Image from flickr: Felice de Sena Micheli

‘Are Students’ Union recession proof?’ that was muttered by our chief executive during a meeting the other day. He’s not the only one wondering. We’ve kicked off a discussion over on The Charity Place about how Students’ Union’s can respond to the challenges that are potentially ahead. So here’s my key points about how Union’s can respond to the threat of a recession, some are specific to UCLan but some could go for the sector as a whole.

1. Make sure no one can question our legitimacy. This means showing what we do, how we do it and why we’re important. This makes it harder for people to take things away if we are shown to be doing an excellent job. Also, as Union’s officially become charities it’ll be important to consider our impacts as an organisation and be able to measure them. The days of just giving money to said club and society and saying ‘that’s involvement’ is going to be harder to justify, or running said campaign because someone sitting in an office thinks ‘it’d look good wouldn’t it?’ are dead.

2. Get smart with technology. We’re looking at investing in technologies which will allow us to use students data to increase loyalty to student services, get smarter with how we communicate with students and ensure that destination events are promoted effectively. Poster/flyer blindness is rife and especially for us being a city campus we’ve got to compete for every single penny to ensure we are still the ‘gatekeepers’ of the student market and student pound.

3. Customer service. Ensure that commercial outlets are 100% switched on and ready to please every single customer who comes through the door. Students are going to be thinking twice about spending, and we need to make sure that when they do spend that tenner they are very happy with what they’ve got – not just the product but everything that comes with it.

4. Don’t rush into things. Just because there is a recession looming (or already here) doesn’t mean we should just retreat into the trenches. There are umpteen opportunities for Students’ Union’s to partner up with loads of different organisations and work with them to deliver services, create a market, deliver information and much more. This is especially relevant if there is going to be a big government splurge in spending, as some of that might be up for grabs for new projects or promotions.

5. Innovate. Be a leader, take the odd risk or two but make sure you’ve backed it up with resources. Not easy in a recession, but if you spot an opportunity to expand then make sure you’ve got the support behind it and do it properly.

6. Engage the membership. They after all are in charge, go out to the membership and ask them how they think things can be improved, get them onboard, get them working with you, for you, feeding back to you and most of all being loyal to you.

7. Develop niches. Ensure that while you’re appealing to the 18-22 student pound market that you’re developing niche products/services/communications that satisfy a particular demographic of the student body. We know that the demographics of students are changing to include international, mature, part-time, commuting and a whole host of other ‘groups’ – identify them and develop strands to appeal to them and bring them into the mix.

What do you think? Are Students’ Union’s actually recession proof? Or is that bullshit? Will some go out of business? How can they survive?

NUSSL (and NUS) needs to offer business solutions to Students’ Union’s

I spent a few hours on Monday at an NUS Services Ltd event in Birmingham about local business income generation. Well, it was supposed to be about that but the general idea seemed to be whether NUSSL could move into the student media agency area which is dominated by the likes of BAM, OnCampus, Student Media Group etc.

The overwhelming mood in the room was ‘No, you missed the boat about 5 years ago’. But, there is a huge area where NUSSL could provide something very useful to Students’ Union’s. Business solutions and in particular web based ones.

If I was in NUSSL and looking for ways to diversify I’d be considering:

- Taking an open source CRM solution and modifying it for Students’ Union’s

- Providing membership solutions in terms of clubs and societies

- Working on data solutions for Union’s to offer loyalty products such as swipe cards etc

- Offering training to Union’s on how to use social media, web technologies and how to generate income from the web

- Working on ideas for how to generate new revenue streams from mature, international, part-time and postgraduate students, because the student movement is not getting any younger

Unfortunately the event didn’t allow for much exploration of these ideas because it was dominated by lots of ‘no, no, no’ rather than ‘what about, maybe, could we’. NUSSL needs a culture change and to figure out what Students’ Union’s need in the 21st century to connect with their memberships and remains as the gatekeepers of getting messages to the student body.