Barack Obama and Micro-Philanthropy

Can nonprofits learn something from Barack Obama’s online fundraising success? This is the subject of a recent discussion over at NTEN.

For me, the short answer is, “Yes, they can.”

For the long answer, I’d recommend the final section of Anthony Barnnett’s Taking Obama Seriously. Barnnett argues that the digital natives running Obama’s campaign have achieved online successes unlike any other candidate because their message, style, and form have matched the new medium.

What does this mean for nonprofits? It’s not enough to put interns in charge of your social media strategy. The entire organization -- from its executive director and board members down to rank and file supporters -- need to adjust to the changing communications environment in order to stay relevant.

To develop a consistent personality online, new positions should be created that require the expertise and intuition of digital natives. Communications and development directors should update their skill sets. Executive drectors should start blogging. And most importantly, nonprofits should not be fearful of empowering extra-organizational activists to promote their work online and recruit new donors.

Here are a few excerpts from Taking Obama Seriously:

The first internet candidate

bama is among the first presidential candidates and potential world leaders to have integrated the web into his communications, and he is the first to have done so in a way that reflects and adapts the development of the technology itself: he has integrated social networking into his campaigning.

...

The large numbers of young people who have campaigned for him have seen him for themselves: on their computers. The success of an early Obama MySpace site, run by a volunteer, was a harbinger. Today his official Facebook site has 360,000 members (and the unofficial "Barack Obama for President" has nearly 450,000); by contrast, Hillary Clinton's official Facebook site has only 88,000 members (and "STOP Hillary Clinton" has over 750,000). There are sixteen social-network groups plugged into Obama's official site, Hillary's has five. It seems a telling comparison that Facebook's "McCain for President" has just 5,500 members and there seem to be no social-network links on his official site at all.

...

The web works best when it transforms by reinforcing and enhancing what people already want to do. This makes it open to incorporation by existing brands and companies even when it changes them greatly in the process. But it is very hard for individuals who were fully formed before the web to re-gear their communications. Obama, and his even younger advisors and speechwriters, are internet naturals at ease with its innovations. His website is easy to navigate (apart from the absence of a site search-engine) and itself feels at home with the medium.

...

If he wins, what will President Obama make of this exceptional force of his web and internet presence? His constant refrain is that "change does not happen from the top down, it happens from the bottom up". Numerous times he has said that he cannot deliver unless the demand is there from below. While this is a wise perception, modest about his own power and inspiring for those to whom it is addressed, it is also a get-out-clause for an Obama presidency. For how can there be pressure from below? And without it, he has already declared, his promises may prove worthless.

There are steps he can take on the ground to encourage "bottom-up" pressure: by taking federal measures to ensure that all citizens have the right to vote and to prevent gerrymandering, not to speak of reforming the electoral college to prevent the scandal of 2000 from ever happening again. But a new president with the Obama team's know-how could well enable participation and organisation online. This, of course, is certain to generate its own energy and autonomy, unconstrained by beltway special interests. So there is now a way of putting pressure on Washington "from below".

Obama should be warned as well as congratulated: those who live by the web can die by it.

Continue reading "Taking Obama Seriously" >>

The coming weeks are bound to see many more blog posts on how nonprofits can base their communications and development strategies on the "Obama model". If you know of other articles on this subject, please post a link in the comments section below.

For a contrary view to the notion that nonprofits need to embrace social media, see The NonProfit Times article, Social Networking Becoming Old Technology In A Hurry.

Tags: fundraising, microphilanthropy, nptech, nten, obama