Heading Home for the Holidays, Albeit with Heavy Hearts

Next week, many of us will be going home for the holidays… but the occasion won’t be as festive as usual. Many families will be hurting, and we’ll be hugging our loved ones a little bit closer this holiday… especially the little ones.

What happened on December 14^th in Newtown, Connecticut shocked ThinkInk staff to the core, brought tears to our eyes and served as a catalyst for anger and frustration. Regardless, all we can do right now is love our neighbors up north from afar and help out as much as we possibly can as part of the greater American family.

Which is why, this year, ThinkInk is dedicating our holiday season to giving to the victims and their families by donating to the Newtown Memorial Fund. We hope that our donation makes life a little easier for those who are grieving while having to bury their loved ones in the coming days.

Even in the face of great tragedy and in those moments where our faith in humanity falters, other people and their actions restore that faith. ThinkInk is proud to be a part of the American community, one that is reaching out to help our neighbors in Connecticut. 

This holiday season, hold your loved ones tight!

From all of us ThinkInk, we wish you and your loved ones a very safe, joyous and prosperous New Year.

Giving Tuesday: How Nonprofits are Leveraging Social Media to Reach Donors

By: Christian Williams, Social Enterprise and Visibility Specialist

Did you catch a #GivingTuesday tweet on your timeline during the week after Thanksgiving?

In the aftermath of the shopping ‘holidays’ of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday was a refreshing breakaway from the madness of people clamoring for hot deals from retailers across the United States. The social media movement encouraged consumers to make a difference this holiday season by donating to their favorite charities.

And guess what? It worked.

According to this infographic by MDG Advertising, nonprofits with a presence on social media networks saw a great outcome during the Tuesday campaign: a 53% increase in the amount donated on the same day in 2011. The average donation was $101, an almost-$40 increase from the average daily donation.

A visit to the movement’s website, GivingTuesday.org, provided a showcase of nonprofit partners big and small; both smaller regional organizations and huge international charities got involved in the project and ended up making a big return on their investment.

Today (on the once-in-a-lifetime calendar date of 12/12/12) in The ThinkTank’s hometown of Miami, the social giving continued locally with #GiveMiamiDay, a 24-hour giving project organized by The Miami Foundation and designed to provide funding for deserving nonprofits in the city. As of 3pm today, over $630,000 had been raised among more than 100 charities.

So why do these campaigns make such a big impact? It’s simple to explain: if you want a consumer to donate, you have to go to where they are. They are all on social media! Social platform ShareThis was mentioned in a Mashable article stating that socially shared content accounted for approximately 10% of all web content.

The ThinkTank loves nonprofits, and we’re definitely looking forward to watching the concept of social giving become bigger and better, and to see more organizations - large, tiny, local and international - hop on board. Any nonprofit that doesn’t do so risks losing out on a major opportunity not only to raise funds, but also to help others learn about their mission.

  

Giving Thanks for the Chance to Give Unused Rewards to Causes

This blog post was originally posted on KULA Causes' blog The Currency of Giving on 11/29/12. 

Thanksgiving may be over for another year but the feeling of gratitude, the desire to help others and to give back lives on at KULA and with our partner companies and their customers.

This is evident not in the Thanksgiving Thursday, Black Friday or Cyber Monday shop-a-thons, but in the millions of unused reward points and miles that are being converted by travelers into donations that benefit nonprofits all over the world.

When media has become so fixated on how much North Americans have shelled out during the four-day Thanksgiving period at brick-and-mortar outlets or online, it feels great to be contrarian and focus on how these consumers are using their points or miles to help others. It also feels great to know that we have a developed a very powerful giving engine that creates meaningful brand loyalty by connecting those consumers with the companies and causes they truly care about – all year round.

So while North Americans gave thanks then dashed out to shop last week, we continue to be grateful every day for the travelers who donate their miles and for our partners, like JetBlue and Milepoint that support the more than 2.5 millions causes available through the our CLM™ platform.

And instead of pictures of stampeding shoppers, we’ll close out with images that inspire us to be grateful.

Putting Profits Before People: Just How Much Bad News can Apple’s Brand Withstand?

By: Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer

The damaging news just keeps flowing out of Foxconn’s “employee barracks” in China, where Apple’s iconic products are made.

In August 2012, the Fair Labor Association released the results of an investigation it had conducted at Apple’s request after reports of employees rioting and committing suicide over excessive work hours, inadequate compensation and unsafe working conditions.

The FLA reported that Foxconn had addressed most of the problems regulators said must be fixed, including ergonomic breaks and equipment redesign to prevent repetitive stress injuries, cutting excessive overtime hours and updating safety and equipment-testing policies.

But new trouble at Foxconn is creating yet more bad publicity for the Taiwan-based manufacturer – and for Apple.

The Economic Policy Institute reported earlier this month that the FLA’s assessment of Foxconn’s progress was too “rosy,” that high demand for the much-hyped iPhone 5 has essentially undone what few improvements have been made and gave a sharp criticism of the most valuable company in history:

“The paramount issue remains whether Apple will ever choose to apply its legendary business prowess and spirit of innovation, and its enormous financial clout, to the goal of protecting the basic human rights of the people who make those products."

Ouch.

The news comes at a time when the gadget giant is dealing with several PR hits it has taken over the past few months.

• In early September 2012, during the run-up to the big announcement of the iPhone 5’s impending release, Forbes reported that Apple’s patent court battle with Samsung was drawing criticism even from its fans, many of whom felt Apple is filing frivolous patents and is afraid of Samsung’s competition.
• Shortly after that the Maps debacle that left many befuddled iOS 6 users “iLost” dominated tech media for several weeks.
• More recently, research firm Strategy Analytics released a report showing that iPhone owner loyalty is in decline, with 75% of Western European iPhone owners planning to buy their next phone from Apple, down from 88% last year. In the US, repeat purchase intentions have also declined since 2011, from 93% then to 88% now.
• On November 8, former Apple exec David Sobotta told CNet that Steve Jobs’ successor as CEO, Tim Cook, is a technological “lightweight.”

And now there’s the latest episode in the ongoing Foxconn saga. If human rights violations continue unchecked at Foxconn, it could mean a very serious hit for Apple notwithstanding the powerful halo effect I’ve written about that seems to protect the company’s reputation and bottom line.

So I am in full agreement with the sentiment the EPI investigators expressed in closing their report. If Apple were to use its huge economic and cultural clout to force Foxconn to truly improve conditions at its Chinese factories – and I mean improvements verifiable by independent investigators, not those acting at Apple’s behest – it would not only make worker’s lives better (the most important thing), it would have the side effect of being a great PR coup for the company.

Pushing to put people before profits could protect Apple’s halo and advance its once-untarnished reputation. Will the tech behemoth put aside shareholder pressure and have the guts to do it?  I don’t think Apple will, but in this case, I would love to be proven wrong.

The Nonprofit Post-Election Connection - An Open Letter to President Obama

By: Christian Williams, Social Enterprise Coordinator

Dear President Obama,

In your victory speech on Wednesday morning, you made a poignant statement about American unity. “… While each of us will pursue our own individual dreams, we are an American family, and we rise or fall together as one nation and as one people.” 

Nonprofits are unique in their ability as an organization to unite a politically divided public. Nonprofits influence an American culture of giving, geared to helping our nation’s citizens and companies work toward the greater good - regardless of political affiliation. We’ve already seen evidence of this in our recovery efforts for Hurricane Sandy victims.

Now that you’ve been re-elected, what will you do for nonprofit organizations?  Can you:

Influence companies to grow their corporate giving? Companies traditionally represent a huge chunk of the donations made to charities. How can you encourage companies to grow their giving programs? Can you offer tax breaks or other incentives to promote the use of employee philanthropy and volunteer programs?

Stand by nonprofit employers? Continue your support of nonprofit organizations that hire new employees by supporting them through measures like your monumental health care reform, allowing payroll tax credits to offset the cost of providing healthcare to their employees?

Continue being an example?  President Obama, you are known for being one of the most giving presidents in American history. You and Michelle contributed $172, 130 to charity in 2011, a whopping 22 percent of your adjusted income. You have even linked up with the likes of Republican talk show host Bill O’Reilly to raise money for a nonprofit organization, showing a willingness to reach across the aisle to work toward doing good.

Please continue being an example to the rest of us and encourage your fellow Americans to be as giving as you have been.

Do these things and we’ll be looking forward to another four years under your leadership.

Sincerely,

Christian Williams

The ThinkTank, Helping Nonprofits Grow

Greenwashing and Eco-Fatigue: Bogus Green Claims do Everyone a Disservice

By: Kyrsten Cazas, Community & Visibility Specialist

Green·wash (grēn'wŏsh', -wôsh') – verb: the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service.  – TerraChoice Environmental Marketing Inc., 2007.

Last year, Britain’s Channel 4 released a documentary that investigated claims by the California-based Fiji Water company that, as a way to reduce its carbon footprint, it would plant four square miles of trees in Fiji between 2007 and 2010.

But investigators found that, as of mid-2011, the company had only planted 1.4 square miles of trees with no evident plan to fulfill its promise.

By then we’d all heard of Fiji Water, which the company touts as being “drawn from an artesian aquifer that lies hundreds of feet below the edges of a primitive rainforest” in an “isolated and idyllic setting.” Its claims of environmental friendliness and pretty illustrated bottles have landed Fiji in the hands of some much-photographed celebs, on the tables of many ritzy restaurants and even on some prime-time hit TV shows.

But plain old common sense can tell anyone that Fiji Water’s claims are dubious, at best. Fiji Water is collected on an island way out in the Pacific Ocean. Which means that it is collected thousands of miles from pretty much anywhere; the closest large market for this water, Australia/New Zealand, is, at its closest point, about 1,300 miles away. Just imagine the volume of CO₂ emissions it must take to fly and truck this stuff to, say, Manhattan, London or Miami?

An overload of green marketing – as well as an epidemic of misleadingly-labeled or marketed products (clean coal, anyone?) – has left consumers feeling the effects of eco-fatigue for several years now.

After all, how much eco-hype can a weary mass of befuddled consumers take? It doesn’t help when Stanford University tells us that much-hyped pricey organic foods – which pulled in about $29.2 billion last year – aren’t any more nutritious than regular foods, although they do reduce exposure to pesticides.

But still, this eco-fatigue is reflected in changing consumer attitudes toward “green” products.

A recent Green Gauge survey by GfK shows that 93% of consumers say they’ve changed their household behavior to save energy, but are less willing this year to pay more for products labeled as “environmentally-friendly” than they were in 2008.

So consumers have spoken and it’s going to be much harder for deceptive marketers to greenwash products. The Federal Trade Commission recently released new rules that require marketers of “green” products to back up their claims with hard data – including proof that a salient benefit isn’t canceled out by toxic aspects of production or distribution.

And it’s about time, too.

Greenwashers who deceive consumers do everyone – including their own brands, when the deception is discovered – a huge disservice. They are particularly harmful to the genuine environmental movement which is trying to address real dangers, such as the climate change, pollution and deforestation that threaten our planet – and ultimately the survival of our species.

Who feels as strongly against greenwashing as I do?  I would love to hear from you, and especially if you’ve been the victim of greenwashing.

The Ugly Side of NPOs’ and NGOs’ Branding Machines

By: Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer

Two years ago, Susan G. Komen for the Cure – which has come under a lot of scrutiny in recent months due to the huge amount it spends on nebulous “awareness” efforts – made headlines by essentially saying “we own the words ‘for the cure’ and we own the color pink.”

This isn’t the first time I’ve discussed the pinkwashing of October, the commercialization of the breast cancer movement and Komen’s politicized – and self-defeating – attempt to pull funding from Planned Parenthood.

Over the past few years, the nonprofit giant has also received much criticism for seemingly prioritizing its branding efforts – it spends a great deal of time and money suing other charities that use “for the cure” or similar variants or which use the color pink – over its original mission to help find a cure for breast  cancer.

This problem is also besetting the big nonprofit organizations (NPOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that are often among the first groups on the ground wherever there is a disaster, whether natural or man-made, that cuts off the flow of basic services and leaves behind large numbers of human casualties.

Nonprofit Quarterly reported recently that the huge amounts of money and in-kind donations rounded up by the best-known NPOs and NGOs frequently get tangled up in bureaucratic webs spun by organizations bent on “branding” their efforts and making sure they get the credit, particularly in the press, for the aid.

Unfortunately this renders their missions moot, as those most in need after a disaster – those injured, those left homeless, families of the dead – have to wait that much longer to get help. It also, ironically, cancels out the organizations’ branding efforts when negative media stories arise.

With post-disaster humanitarian assistance ever more politicized and convoluted, concerned with press coverage and hobbled by competition for funds, it’s clear the system is broken and increasingly inadequate in responding to disasters – especially those that aren’t big enough to command the whole world’s attention.

Obviously, we need some fresh ideas. And the Consortium of British Humanitarian Agencies has come forward with a bold proposition: an emergency response fund that cuts through the red tape and channels aid quickly based on where it’s needed most, not on how much press a disaster is likely to get.

And isn’t that the whole point of emergency aid organizations? Yes, of course, they need to promote and fund themselves, but not at the expense of their stated missions, something the American Red Cross was criticized for after Haiti’s 2010 earthquake.

The general fund idea has worked before. Over the past two years the CBHA tested the idea with a pilot program, the Emergency Response Fund, which has funneled 48 grants to 12 crisis areas in a speedy fashion, unhindered by NGOs’ and NPOs’ branding concerns. 67 percent of those funds went to local groups, which often – though not in every case, naturally – are the best-positioned to get money and supplies flowing right after earthquakes, floods, nuclear meltdowns and other crises hit communities around the world.

Of course, there are some difficulties that would have to be worked out to implement a similar fund on a global scale. The aid giants – which still do commendable work despite their myriad problems – would have to be convinced to go beyond self-interest and participate. And donors would have to be convinced to give up control of where their donations go.

So the CBHA faces an uphill battle if it wants to get all the usual disaster-relief actors (governments as well as NGOs and NPOs) on board with this great idea. But, given the results of the pilot program, it’s something we need to try. Disasters and their victims can’t sit around waiting for self-proclaimed savior groups that can’t seem to get their act together. The longer aid groups squabble over control of branding and of the media narratives, the larger the body count on the ground.

And that’s an untenable state of affairs.

Response to this initiative will tell us which groups are truly committed to the causes that are their purported raison d’etre – and which are hopelessly hampered by an obsession with image. 

The State of Democratized Giving: How Cause Marketing Can Be Up For a Vote

This post originally appeared on the KULA Causes blog on 09/13/12.

“Do well while doing good.”

This inspiring quote is commonly attributed to American founding father and Renaissance man Benjamin Franklin, a wealthy entrepreneur whose penchant for frugality, industry and civic responsibility would leave him out of place in many of today’s corporate glass-and-steel fortresses.

Many, but not all. 

Why? Over the last few years, thanks in part to burgeoning technology, Ben Franklin-style democracy is no longer relegated just to political parties and four-year election cycles. To a very real extent, the term “democracy” can now be applied to cause marketing itself.

Especially when it comes to the “civic responsibility” mentioned above, today’s corporations, along with the consumers who patronize their businesses, appreciate the need to give back—and they’re giving back in very new and innovative ways.

The democratization of cause-related marketing means that, rather than the heads of corporations controlling the type of causes that their customers donate to, those customers now have a real, unmatched, and democratic say in the types of causes that they can to donate to within a company’s corporate philanthropy program.

Consumers Have Choice

Today, consumers select the causes. And they advocate not only for causes, but for brands, too. Like the thousands who tweeted their approval or disapproval of recent RNC and DNC political speeches, cause-related marketing has become a real-time, interactive experience. And that experience benefits both consumers (through heightened engagement and the feeling of doing good by giving back to their favorite cause) and corporations (via insight into customer behavior and values)—not to mention the nonprofits they both support.

Just in the last few years, campaigns like Kohl’s Cares and the Pepsi Refresh Project—an initiative to award $20 million in grants to whomever came up with inspiring solutions to help advance ones’ community, state and nation, and the ability to channel those funds directly to the organizations that could implement those ideas—are just the beginning of this new, two-way giving conversation. The National Philanthropic Trust reported that in 2011, there was a 20% increase in contributions to consumer-advised fund programs, illustrating that this type of “democratized giving” is really catching on.

Doing Well by Doing Good

Consider Bruce Burtch, the architect of one of the first known “cause marketing” campaigns—a 1976 partnership between the Marriott hotel chain and the March of Dimes nonprofit—that yielded over 2 million visitors for Marriott’s then-new Great America hotel and $2.5 million for March of Dimes’ mission of improved health for mothers and babies. As a historical footnote, Burtch has also been credited with coining the “do well while doing good” phrase. 

No matter who strung those five words together, the concept of reaping rewards by contributing in ways that have a positive social impact—be it through nonprofit partnerships, investment in microfinance institutions, or maintaining a portfolio of stock in companies that practice good corporate governance—is alive and well and stronger than ever—whether we’re talking about corporate giving, or today’s newer, technology-dependent and more democratized approach.

The ROI of Corporate Philanthropy

But when you consider that close to $16 billion in loyalty points and rewards go unredeemed—and basically wasted—every year, you wonder why more companies aren’t offering their consumers the choice to do some good in the world by channeling those unused rewards to charity. After all, by doing good, companies can generate greater brand awareness and increase ROI from their corporate philanthropy.

Speaking of democratized giving, we’re also creating a new way for companies to do well while doing goodthrough our Cause-Related Loyalty Marketing platform (CLM) that helps brands engage with consumers through their cause-related affinities.

CLM links a brand’s customers to over 2.5 million causes in more than 50 countries around the world, allowing them to redeem their rewards, points and miles and convert them into donations to their favorite causes. Our SaaS loyalty technology powers this online giving platform, which enables companies to engage with customers in a more meaningful way. By enabling “democratized giving,” we’re able to help companies calculate the ROI of their corporate philanthropy—showing them that doing good can be profitable—all while turning customers into brand advocates.

The State of the (Giving) Union

The bottom line is that democratized giving is putting the power of choice in the hands of consumers. Consumer-advised donations democratize philanthropy, aid the corporate-nonprofit relationship and make giving a whole lot more rewarding. They also simplify what can be an onerous donation process, both for consumers, who can help multiple non-profits through a single process, and for non-profits, which don’t have to worry about converting non-cash donations (such as unredeemed rewards and miles) into contributions.

Taken in whole (and in keeping with the democratic political spirit of this piece) the state of democratized giving in our Union is strong—and getting stronger. And best of all, unlike the upcoming presidential election, no one has to wait until November to show their support! 

This post originally appeared on the KULA Causes blog on 09/13/12.

Mobile is Changing Everything – Except the Direction of Where Donations Go

By Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer

In January 2010, a devastating magnitude-7 earthquake struck the Caribbean island of Haiti whose epicenter lay just west of its capital, Port-au-Prince.

Within hours, photos and videos of the devastation – entire neighborhoods wiped out, mangled bodies everywhere, a partially-collapsed Presidential Palace and so on were the main story for the world’s news media.

Yet soon after, a second news media narrative began taking shape and this one far more positive. Within two days of the crisis, Americans alone had raised $5 million for the Red Cross’ relief efforts in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country…by sending in small donations via text message.

At the time I praised the work of relief agencies and felt that if there was any relative “good news” (a very relative term considering the level of disaster) it was that Haiti, possibly for the first time, and without question on the largest scale to date, demonstrated to the world the power of mobile giving and how millions of SMS messages containing $10 donations added up. One week after the quake, the Red Cross had raised $22 million through texting alone.

But as the Atlantic hurricane season began unfurling its wrath late last week with tropical storm – now Hurricane – Isaac, media briefly returned to the impoverished land and beamed back disturbing images. In the 959 days since the historic temblor, as the world has been consumed by an onslaught news both serious and silly, I was disturbed to learn that some 400,000 of Haiti’s 9.8 million citizens remain in abysmal tent cities and unimaginable squalor following the quake – not to mention the island nation’s non-earthquake-induced entrenched poverty.

Images like the ones we’ve been treated to again cry out for an answer: why do we as decent, caring and law-abiding citizens allow such poverty to exist? Why can some buy iPads or microwave frozen dinners and why must others survive in shantytowns and consider electricity a “luxury?” More pragmatically, the still-battered landscape and still-battered people deserve another question answered. Where was all that money spent and what good has it done?

Thankfully, all is not bleak. Objective new reports have repeatedly found that much good has come from the relief effort and the money raised. In January of this year the Huffington Post produced an excellent infographic that broke down the numbers. Here are some big ones as of that article’s writing:

• 50% of earthquake debris has been removed and 20% recycled
• 100,000 received homes from the Red Cross
• Of the $4.6 billion pledged by donors, only $2.38 has been spent

This all suggests significant improvement. But the article was equally quick to point out that millions of dollars alone were also spent on advertising campaigns “telling people to wash their hands.” Other news outlets like Global Post attributed the siphoning of funds to Haiti’s notorious black market, proving once again that for many, crime pays. So for all the good mobile donations have done, it seems it did very little in changing human nature, and if anything, exposed in all its gruesomeness, how a survival of the fittest mentality can take on such inhuman qualities.

Two years and seven months after the Haiti earthquake a new threat from Mother Nature is bearing down on New Orleans –a city once brought to its knees by hurricane Katrina. You can be sure as in Haiti, mobile donations will figure prominently there too. But perhaps, we can all learn an important lesson. Money coming in via text, like a torrent flood water, must be controlled so that rather than inundating areas in confusing, haphazard (and dangerous manners) it flows to where it’s needed most, giving government and watchdog organizations time to monitor those who seek to game the system.

Here’s a suggestion: what about SMS giving integrated with social media and photo identification – someway to demonstrate that money that was texted actually goes to a specific person, city, town, or group?

Is this a bulletproof idea? No. But at least it proves that we’re trying and that we’re continuing to find new ways to use new technology. Levee-like controls on mobile giving are a good way to start, even if such safeguards have done little to help Haiti’s 400,000 virtual homeless. But as hurricane Isaac sets course for the Crescent City, another real-world test might be hours away.

Louisianans and Haitians both deserve we get this right, finally.

Good Goes Social: How Panera Bread Got Customer Service Right When It Didn’t Even Have To

By Christian Williams, Social Enterprise Specialist

I’ve been a huge fan of Panera Bread for a little over a year - ever since I got hooked on their macaroni and cheese. I’ve never tried their clam chowder though (I’m not much of a clam guy), but it must be good from what I’ve heard – and just as good as a Panera Bread store manager’s idea of customer service.

Panera Bread took the Facebook community by storm earlier this month when Brandon Cook posted a story of his dying grandmother’s request for Panera’s clam chowder. The story explained his effort to get the clam chowder for his grandmother regardless of the fact that it wasn’t a Friday (the only day of the week that Panera sells clam chowder.) The young man contacted his local Panera branch and was put in touch with a manager named Sue, who went out of her way to get clam chowder to Brandon’s grandmother.

His mother, Gail Cook, soon reposted the story to Panera Bread’s Facebook page, and the story went viral from there. Since the story was posted to Panera’s page on August 8^th, the post has gotten a whopping 760,263 likes.

32, 643 comments have also graced the heartwarming post. Most of the comments include an outpouring of support and well wishes for the ailing grandmother as well as many messages of thanks to the Panera Bread manager, Suzanne Fortier, for her selflessness and willingness to assist a customer in need. Many of the comments are from college-aged students like the younger Cook, which makes me even happier.

My take on it:

We all love a good news story. But when a customer goes out of their way to tell that story themselves because they were so greatly impacted by it, it means so much more. Brandon Cook didn’t need to write about his experience at Panera Bread – just like Suzanne Fortier didn’t need to go out of her way to make a single serving of clam chowder for an ailing woman.

The actions of both Brandon and Suzanne show that doing a little can do a very long way, especially when it comes to communicating good deeds through social media.

Now, every time I eat at Panera Bread, I’ll always associate the experience with feelings of kindness and the joy of one human helping another. And that feeling is addictive, just like Panera Bread’s food don’t you think?

Associated Press Takes a Closer Look at the Need for Microfinance in the US

About two weeks ago, I wrote a post about the pressing need for microfinance services – particularly microcredit, small loans for very small businesses – here at home in the US, not just in the developing world. In that post I featured OUR MicroLending, a Miami-based microcredit company that has disbursed over 1,050 small loans to over 600 South Florida micro-entrepreneurs, to the tune of around $6.2 million, who were turned away by the big banks after applying for loans. In our current credit crunch, the company is giving these hard-working merchants a way to restock, expand, hire and, by extension, stimulate their local neighborhood economies. OUR MicroLending is also working to expand its operations to the entire state of Florida and, eventually, the rest of the country. Because there is so much unfulfilled need for these types of services here, I was heartened to read an excellent Associated Press article, published last week, about the fine work microfinance organizations are doing in the United States. OUR MicroLending had a starring role in the story, which appeared in the Washington Post and at least 25 newspapers and websites, spreading the message of financial inclusion far and wide. My congratulations go to AP reporter Laura Wides-Muñoz for a great piece. Here’s hoping some struggling entrepreneurs who don’t know about microfinance read it and realize there is hope.

Bullied bus monitor receives money for retirement (and then some) via crowdfunding

By: Christian Williams, Social Media Specialist

I was somewhat pleased to hear about the coming retirement of Karen Klein from her job as an upstate New York public school system bus monitor. She deserves it.

Last month, the social networking world took the bullied bus monitor and grandmother from Greece, NY, under its wing while unleashing its fury upon the group of middle schoolers whose periodic tormenting reached a despicable level and was captured by cell phone camera and posted on YouTube The 10-minute clip shows a group of rude, mean-spirited seventh-graders hurling insults and profanities at Karen as she sits, crying, on the adjacent bus seat. (The four boys were later suspended from the Greece Central School District for the 2012-2013 school year; they also have to perform 50 hours of community service with senior citizens.)

An Internet user named Max Sidorov started an Indiegogo crowdfunding project in Karen’s honor, and it proceeded to go viral via social media networks. Crowdfunding involves asking a crowd of people (usually through social media) to donate defined amounts of money to support a specific cause. Most of the time, rewards (such as special event invitations, t-shirts and other paraphernalia) are given to those who donate. Non-profits can use this method to fund specific aspects of a fundraising campaign.

The campaign was originally supposed to raise $5,000 to send her on a dream vacation. But as more people watched the video, more money was donated. By the end of the campaign, 32,000 funders from at least 84 countries and all 50 U.S. states donated an impressive  $703, 833, nearly 47 times her annual $15,000-a-year income.

Making this even sweeter: Another stranger started a separate campaign to provide Sidorov with a reward for his passion and leadership in starting the efforts to help Klein. That project also surpassed its goal, raising $7,465.

A month later, Sidorovi is at it again – this time to raise money for anti-bullying initiatives including a documentary and nonprofit organization.

Before we entered the Facebook and mobile social media age, people witnessing something like this happen right in front of them would have had a far more challenging time turning outrage into action. A phone call to the media? Sure. A lucky (or unlucky) bystander’s camcorder taping? Also possible, but unlikely.  

Now, however, many Internet users can’t bear to sit back and watch while injustice is documented and unfolds on their screens. Crowdfunding has made it easy for passionate individuals near and far to break out their credit cards and support causes they believe in – whether it involves a long-term goal like funding the fight against bullying, or short-term, involving a mission to make one bullied bus monitor’s day.

In Karen Klein’s case, mission accomplished. 

How the Path to Financial Success Has Many Roads and Why Microfinance is Often Overlooked

By Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer of The ThinkTank

Imagine a woman who founded a courier company and now has offices and employees in two counties shuttling documents for clients such as architectural and law firms. Envision another woman who turns the love of her native country into a living by selling Colombian souvenirs, crafts, food and clothing. Or dream of a man and his staff who profit from their talents by crafting creative signage and painting custom designs on cars and boats.

These are just three of hundreds of hard-working South Florida entrepreneurs who have wielded maybes and can-dos into realized storefronts and American middle class status. And they’ve done this through a unique financial channel called microlending. While microlending is well known across Latin America and in developing nations, sadly its existence, popularity and prevalence stateside remain in a nascent phase.

Unfortunately, most of the news I read and hear about microfinance in the U.S. involves providing those services abroad when in fact a vast underserved population exists right here. Don’t get me wrong, helping the disenfranchised in places like Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia is a noble thing. But I’m often left wondering why so little of the microfinance conversation involves helping out low-income entrepreneurs right here at home.

Now more than ever, microfinance can be the homegrown vehicle that turns this trend around - especially as the latest jobs report shows the same stubbornly high unemployment, lackluster job creation and consumer penny pinching across the board. The result is that hundreds of thousands of marginal-income families have slipped through the proverbial cracks and our snail-paced economic recovery continues to widen that fissure. Good credit becomes bad credit and access to traditional bank loans dries up.

People can help, and not just by giving donations or crowdfunding, the latest personal investing trend. Many of the recession’s forgotten casualties don’t want handouts; they want opportunities to work themselves out of a financial hole. Kiva Microfunds, a San Francisco-based tiny loan lender, clearly has the right approach. The company connects donors who wish to give money in as little as $25 increments and has lent out $335 million across 62 countries, boasting a 99% repayment rate. Closer to home, Our MicroLending, of Miami, has disbursed over 1,050 loans totaling $6.2 million to over 600 micro-enterprises whose owners use the funds to restock, remodel, expand and hire.

Fortunately there’s other good news as well. Microlending is also increasingly interwoven with the phenomenon of impact investing. Impact investing is the process by which investment takes into account not only direct ROI, but evaluates the social and environmental benefits of doing so. Like mircolending, social impact investing has numerous secondary and tertiary benefits. Blighted neighborhoods on the brink of collapse revitalize, crime rates fall, juvenile delinquency drops and a community or neighborhood has the chance to rebuild. And just this past spring, Morgan Stanley, inspired by its own studies on the matter, announced the launch of its Investing With Impact Platform. J.P. Morgan predicts that, by 2020, there will between $400 billion and $1 trillion invested in ways that have a positive social impact.

So it’s definitely possible to do well by doing good, no matter where funding comes from. A November 2011 report by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business put the number of microfinance institutions in the U.S. at 362. A strong start for sure. But clearly there can (and should) be more. Investing in microfinance for American entrepreneurs and making sure people out there know that this service is available, that self-employment is an option if they’ve lost their jobs, can do a lot to help ease the protracted financial suffering that has left so many of our fellow Americans penniless and without hope.

To dream is priceless. But acting on dreams comes at a price. Mircofinance and social impact investing are paving – and paying – the way forward to turn entrepreneurial dreams into reality. 

YouTube Joins the (Social) Good Fight

By: Kyrsten Cazas, Community & Visibility Specialist

YouTube has always been a safe haven for piano-playing cats and would-be singers. But lately the Google-owned site has been rolling out quite a few upgrades aimed specifically at nonprofits.

In case you’re new to the YouTube trend, it was founded in February 2005 and allows billions of people all over the world to watch and share originally-created videos. Within the last month the video sharing site announced several new features geared to help nonprofits turn their video views into action. To start, YouTube will be holding monthly online training sessions, “YouTube 101” using Google Hangouts for members of its YouTube Nonprofit Program (a great program that provides free tools such as streaming video and fundraising capabilities). The training sessions, taking place the last Tuesday of every month, kick off July 31^st at 9pm and are geared toward nonprofits new to the service. Think of them like massive videoconferencing and brainstorming sessions.

The site also announced the implementation of annotations that can link to donation websites: Change.org, DonorsChoose.org, RocketHub.com and Causes.com. An annotation is a small dialogue box that pops up in a video and allows video creators to convey messages. Videos used to only link to other videos, channels and search results. Two other annotation options were also added in April, allowing video creators to link to crowdsourcing platforms Kickstarter and Indiegogo. These annotations offer a great opportunity for nonprofits to lead viewers to sites that offer a place to donate and get more involved with the organization.  

YouTube has also released a new tool that blurs faces. The feature provides “visual anonymity” to those filmed allowing video creators to share sensitive footage without exposing those involved. One of the first of its kind, this trailblazing addition comes only a couple of months after the YouTube Human Rights channel launch. In a statement shared with Mashable YouTube said they see this as a tool to protect protesters and advocates, as well as the identities of children.

With all of the exciting opportunities available to nonprofits on YouTube, it’s no wonder their nonprofit program boasts an impressive 17,000 organizations already. Will your organization be number 17,001? Let us know what you think about YouTube’s social good efforts in your comments below. 

For Nonprofits, the Future is Multicultural – and Digital

By: Laura Morales, Hispanic Media Relations and Business Writer

During the latter part of my years as a Miami Herald reporter, I had to drive by the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts every weekday.

Arsht, 70, a philanthropist and business leader, helped save the venue by donating $30 million in 2008. Its opera house is named after another pair of philanthropists, Sanford and Dolores Ziff, whose names are on buildings all over South Florida. Even in Miami, where Latinos outnumber every other ethnic group, most philanthropists’ names you see on buildings are of Anglo or Jewish descent. I’m sure there must be some buildings here named after Hispanic donors, but I can’t think of any.

I’d never given this much thought until I read this Media Post article about the eroding traditional donor base for nonprofits: aging white Baby Boomers. According to its author, ad exec Jose Villa, nonprofits and foundations, whose incomes have already been battered by the recession, are dreading what Villa calls “the coming demographic donor cliff.”

That’s understandable – at least from the 35,000 ft. view. Despite America’s exploding Hispanic population, accounting for half of all population growth between 2000 and 2011 and a Nielsen prediction that between 2011 and 2016, 60% of population growth will be Latino, donation dollars continue to come from a highly stratified subset.

But that too, is poised to change.

Villa, pointing out that non-Millennial Hispanics’ giving is generally limited to church, remittances to Latin America and support for extended families, recommends that nonprofits focus on reaching – and hiring – Hispanic Millennials. He also prescribes an increased mobile digital presence, as 42% of Latinos do most of their online browsing and networking on mobile phones – and that’s a donor resource that must be tapped.

Great idea. We all know mobile is the future. But why stop with Latinos? As I pointed out in a previous post, half of African-Americans do most of their browsing on mobile phones. Nielsen also reports that Asian-Americans outpace all other groups in smartphone adoption. And, moving into the future, these groups’ digital engagement – particularly through smartphones and tablets – is only going to balloon.

As the country charges on toward ethnic plurality nonprofits would also do well to remember that, even individually, these groups wield considerable purchasing power. In the same post I referenced earlier, I noted that combined Hispanic and African-American buying power stands at $2 trillion. That’s more than enough money to balance the US budget for a year. Add to that Asian-Americans’ economic clout – just over $500 billion now and expected to grow to over $700 billion by 2015 – and we’re looking at a strong potential new funding base that can help non-profits achieve their missions. Demographic donor cliff? I don’t think so.

Who knows? Maybe in a decade we’ll start seeing American buildings adorned with names such as Ramírez or Sengupta or Takahashi. I, for one, would find that refreshing. Multicultural funding is the answer and it’s literally a mobile phone call or text away.

Donated tweets? How ordinary people can make an extraordinary difference for your nonprofit

By: Christian Williams, Social Media Specialist

From diseases and disorders like AIDS and autism to public issues such as homelessness and LGBT rights, everyone has at least one cause that affects them in some way. But what if someone can’t afford to support a cause they care about financially? How can you get them to participate in a way that still has meaning and impact?

Sree Sreenivasan, a technology blogger for CNET, had a good idea, one that capitalized on his influence on social media to make a difference for a few special nonprofits. Sreenivasan had his more than 30,000 Twitter followers use Facebook to nominate deserving organizations for pro-bono Twitter publicity. He announced that when he hit the 6,000 tweet mark, he would follow by tweeting about a number of the different organizations that were chosen. The campaign could have taken place solely on Twitter, but using Facebook allowed Sree to bypass Twitter’s 140-character limit.

The Facebook-Twitter publicity combo might have not generated much money for the organizations, but it did generate awareness among thousands of Twitter users that could translate into dollars later on. Don’t forget, awareness is always the first step in fundraising and this type of social media marketing can be used to promote your business or group as well. The key to success is in finding someone influential on Twitter that is passionate about YOUR organization and its mission and values.

I personally like staying engaged in my community through organizations whose missions mean a lot to me. One that I am always talking about is Autism Speaks (my little sister has autism), and my Twitter followers are influenced by the passion and knowledge I have for the New York-based nonprofit. If I can motivate or inspire just one person to click a link to their website, I have already been of service to their promotional efforts without them having to spend a single penny. It also makes me feel great!

We don’t all have 30,000 followers like Sreenivasan does. However, regardless of the number of followers, exposure among the public is key. And there’s always the possibility that someone out there in the Twitterverse is a millionaire that has been looking for an organization just like yours to support.