Minnesota Council on Foundations Blog - Philanthropy Potluck

Photo by Flickr user laffy4k.

I had the opportunity to serve on a Web 2.0 panel last week at the Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers’ annual conference in Minneapolis. We talked about how grantmaker membership organizations, like MCF, can use tools such as blogs, wikis and social networking. This blog was one of the examples, along with MCF member West Central Initiative’s West Central Blogger and West Central News. Northern California Grantmakers is probably the regional association that is using these tools the most, with a blog, wikis, RSS feeds, and maybe even more.

Of course, there wasn’t enough time to talk about all the possibilities or give all of our advice — so here are some of my tips for how regional association staff can find time and content to create and maintain a blog.

We in Minnesota are fortunate to have 10 people on our staff, three of which are in communications; many of the smaller regionals don’t have a dedicated communications member. Think you don’t have time to add a blog to your already crowded daily schedule? You might be surprised:

• Do you write editorials for your local newspaper? A blog is a way to do that on your own terms and on your own schedule. As one of our colleagues said, if we’re not telling our story, someone else is doing it for us — and they’re probably not doing it well. This is a way to have more control over the message. It also can help build awareness of your regional association so that the media knows who to ask when stories about our field arise.
• Do you send a regular e-newsletter? Then you already have a lot of content. MCF’s blog helps me put together our bi-weekly e-newsletters, because many of the topics covered on the blog fit into our e-newsletters in one format or another. When it’s time to compile the e-newsletters, many of those stories are already done. This doesn’t mean that the blog will ever replace e-news; the e-newsletters have additional content that doesn’t make sense to be published to our blog audiences. But it gives those audiences an additional way to hear from us, on a more frequent basis.
• We all have a lot of member grantmakers. They’re all doing great work in the community. Are they sending you those examples? Blogging is an excellent way to highlight local grantmaking and to show transparency in our work.
• Many of our member grantmakers are already blogging. For example, West Central Initiative started their blogs more than a year before MCF did. They’ve also added additional features, such as a Flickr photostream to highlight their grantees and events. Can you invite members to be guest writers on your blog, or create posts that link to their latest updates?
• A blog does not need to be all opinions. It does not even need to include any opinions, if your organization is not comfortable with that. It can feature updates about your members, promotions for your upcoming programs, recaps about past programs, links to stories in the media, the latest legislative news that affects your members, links to the latest research and resources, updates about your members’ funding priorities or changes to the grant application process… the list really could go on and on. Your staff members are working hard for your organization. What can each individual contribute, to show what your association does every day?
• We post new items on this blog every day, but not every blog needs to be updated that frequently. Can you write twice a week? Maybe Mondays and Thursdays? Or even once a week? As long as you make a commitment to a regular schedule, and then stick to it as closely as possible, the frequency itself doesn’t matter.

Blogging is a way for us to recognize that a lot of news and conversations about our field are taking place. Jumping into the conversation, or creating new conversations, helps us clarify and explain philanthropy. (See our Philanthropy Is… video if you think everyone already knows what our sector does.) How can we make philanthropy make sense to people?

Remember that building a community takes time — and that even once you’ve created a blog, you might not get the participation you hoped for. In addition to the reality that many grantmakers don’t like to speak publicly, research has shown that only about 10 percent of all people who use online communities ever participate. That means that for every commenter, you could have nine other people who never respond — but still find your work valuable. Ask your members whether they read what you’re writing, look at the traffic to see how many people are visiting your blog, find out how many people have subscribed to your RSS feeds, etc. You may need to redefine your measurement of success.

Join the conversation: Have you jumped into the Web 2.0 waters? If not, why not? What other tips do you have for regional association social networkers?

- Crystal Colby, MCF’s web communications associate