James' blog

Not for profit organisations with social justice goals often rely on the support of individuals to carry out their work. The use of online technologies to build financial and campaign support presents challenges to many such organisations whose expertise often lies in other fields.

Over a two month period I worked as part of an Online Team at one such organisation and was able to identify a number of the challenges not-for-profit’s face when attempting to build community support online.

Definitions & Discussion

Non-Government Organisations take many forms and the term can broadly refer to groups as diverse as sporting clubs, religious groups, private schools, associations and so on.  While this paper considers non-government organisations working towards policy and social change, much of the discussion would equally apply to this broader definition.  Reference is made to activists, individuals who work towards policy and social change within a broader movement, and the potential for staff within non-government organisations to better engage these individuals.

Much of the impetus for this paper is in the idea that online technology, culture and spaces interact in such a way as to create and require alternative, diverse and changing modes of communicating, organising and influencing individuals and societies. By it’s very design the internet and many online spaces, are  distributed, de-centralised and non-hierarchical in nature – online citizens are active participants in and no long passive recipients of media.  The implications for non-government organisations, as with government and for-profit organisations, are significant.

In considering the specific challenges faced by non-government organisations, comparison with the use of online tools to engage with individuals by business provides some insight.  ’Consumers’ continue to be marketed to through new media with advertising and branding making use of online technology, the fundamental transactions are similar, though altered in form with shifts in the ‘rules of the game’.  For business, Web 2.0 (a term which encompasses a second generation of applications for web technology, such as social networking sites) present a new business and marketing challenge in the form of reputation management as satisfaction or disfavour are able to be instantly communicated by individuals to their friends, family and contacts.

Activists or participants in the work of NGOs on the other hand continue to work towards shared aims with the NGOs, who continue to require their support.  The instantaneous, global nature of online communication breaks many practical barriers to this collaboration, but changed expectations and perspectives on authority and information sources provide altogether new obstacles.  Emerging online communities or movements can experience rapid growth with success and subsequently provide competition to existing, established NGOs who have more traditional modes of communicating with their supporters.

The arrival of video and audio publishing, creation of communal news sources and emergence of real-time information transmission technologies demonstrates a fundamental shift in the media and communications landscape, creating challenges for communication to, building connections with and gaining the support of communities, donors and activists.  This fundamental shift was the basis of ABC Director, Mark Scott’s A.N. Smith Memorial Lecture in Journalism presented at the University of Melbourne on 14th October 2009.

Perhaps the most significant idea that Scott raised, and one I will argue is key to future success of NGOs working online, is captured in the following statements:

Successful organisations will be willing to empower their audiences to contribute, to create and to share media. Will cede power to audiences to gain engagement and respect.

They will be willing to let other voices to be heard. They will learn how to protect brand integrity whilst entrusting their brand to others.

(ABC Fora, ‘Mark Scott On The Fall Of Rome: Media After Empire’ (Video, 47:49) <http://www.abc.net.au/tv/fora/stories/2009/10/21/2720378.htm> accessed 29th October 2009.)

This shift in communication media also necessitates new approaches to collective action, but the need to adapt to stay relevant is not new, “human communication media and the ways in which we organise socially have been co-evolving for quite a long time”. Howard Rheingold, 2005.

A case study

For three months from February 2oo9 I worked as a member of the Online Team in a non-government organisation committed to social justice goals.  This team worked within the broader communications unit along with media, publications and government relations teams, and in co-ordination with teams from other units within the organisation, such as marketing, campaigning, activism and fundraising.  The specific project on which I worked looked at online engagement and had the stated aim of “recruiting online ambassadors to promote the organisation to a wider online audience”.  My initial reaction to the project brief was to recognise the disconnect it created.  The online team were seeking to create a discrete (and manageable) group of supporters writing posts and hopefully driving traffic and new supporters to the organisation’s website, which the majority of the team’s work was in maintaining and creating content for.  The project brief was decided, the ‘deliverables’ clearly outlined and but the strategy which had been developed by the Online Team was fundamentally a top-down approach.

The ‘online ambassador’ brief asked supporters to subscribe to email updates which set an agenda, talking points and expected committed bloggers to write, promote and send new users across to the organisations site, where they’d hopefully sign up as a supporter.

Leadership vs. Management

In this sense, development of online engagement strategy is better suited to staff with ‘leadership’ rather than ‘management’ approaches.  The tension between the top-down strategy set by management and bottom-up approach taken by grass roots participants in the movement (who may also be the organisation’s voting membership) presented particular areas of conflict between the two approaches.  Leadership through guidance, encouragement, correction or otherwise influencing supporters and activists would more successfully engage individual non-staff movement members working online.

While there was an awareness among the online team and some members of staff working in the campaign and activism teams that social promotion and collaborative, de-centralised communication are both powerful and better suited to online communities, opportunities to incorporate or develop these approaches were lost, in the most part because of the requirement of staff roles prioritising a different approach to engaging individuals.

In a sense my host organisation suffered to some extent from an identity crisis, with supporters and contributors seeing it as a movement primarily, while staff functioned day to day in an organisation with usual corporate behaviours.

Providing the resources for online ambassadors

Activist’s expectations of support puts pressure on NGOs to provide greater online access to resources traditionally available through other means. In my involvement with local community based groups prior to working with the Online Team, the failure of the organisation to make campaign resources available online, and regularly update these, was often raised as an issue and cause of frustration.  Neglecting existing supporters who would use resources made available to promote an organisation online by not providing these resources is another lost opportunity.

The publications manager personally commented, when I enquired into the progress of a planned Information Management project for 2009 which had been cancelled, that he was happy with the status quo with regards to information management, or rather that he did not see the point of a project looking at making any change when the problem with the current situation was not well defined.  The individual experience of staff who personally knew how to access information was ignoring that members and activists without the same level of access were impeded from more effectively communicating to, and mobilising, individuals within their own sphere of influence.

Activists and staff in other teams had independently created presences, and were engaging in online activism but potential of these endeavours could not be realised as there was little communication and integration with the work of staff, and no framework through which activists and staff from each region could collaborate.

Information management, and the production of compelling, relevant and multimedia content  is a key area of responsibility for staff working in the Online staff structures of NGOs, a recognition of its importance and the utilisation of supporters with expertise could equally fulfil this need.  This is one of the most easily identified fields in which a failure to encourage volunteer contributions results in greatly reduced capabilities.

Engagement for mobilisation and movement growth

My time working in the Online Team highlighted a disconnect between the concepts of activists as involved contributors to campaigns, and the idea of success being the result of the quality of staff work.  How successfully a campaign action was sold (i.e. well written emails or web content) was often viewed as the primary determining factor in the success of online actions,

Successful communication is certainly important, but the level of engagement in campaign aims was often ignored when evaluating these successes.  There was some difference dependant on what part of the organisation was making the evaluation, with further variation between individuals, based on their own level of experience with online tools, professional background and level of interaction with grass roots movement members.

Challenges for NGOs

In considering the demands and areas for improvement presented in my case study, I identified a number of challenges for NGOs working in the social justice movement.

Misconceptions about working online, having out-of-date plans or strategies, the ineffective use of resources, and simply not engaging even when other elements required are in place, being the four primary issues.

Misconceptions

One challenge for NGOs is in relaxing control held by those employed in positions of power and responsibility, and developing structures and culture that encourages engaging with supporter communities.  Perhaps more practically, staff having a lack of relevant skills or little experience with online communication tools presents an immediate problem.  Both these challenges concern how online communication and engagement are conceived of.

The Online Team at my host organisation sits within the communications unit and has as its primary function the maintenance and creation of content for the organisations website, but “online” is much more pervasive and increasingly requires a response beyond simply production of content.

Out of date plans or strategies:

Hierarchies are often inefficient, slow moving structures which concentrate power and information at the top, denying others the opportunity to take initiative, share ideas and seek solutions for themselves, a sense of agency sacrificed to ensure unity and control.  For an NGO such as my host organisation, this element of control can be a major barrier in engaging supporters in the organisations work.  Management, it would seem, is much easier when the limits to contribution or activity are set, and decided by staff.  For work in online communities this is just the first of a number of conflicts between organisational requirements placed on employees by management or organisational cultures, and the expectations of a new generation of internet users.

To contrast this model, if not-for-profits took an approach in which they opened their structures to allow for more diverse forms of supporter contribution, for example providing a source of information on specific areas of interest to particular bloggers or support in developing content around campaign aims, an entirely different balance of transaction takes place.  Through perceiving individuals already engaged in online communities or activities as individuals with whom to engage, instead of prospects to recruit and dictate to, an organisation would benefit from a rich network of resources and expertise amongst the members of the movements to which they belong, the same of course applies to other forms of activity.  This collaborative approach would be of incredible value in advancing the movement’s aims.

Trust is another key component then in the barrier to access and involvement.  Communication and an open approach to contribution from non-staff members is potentially an area for growth.

Ineffective use of resources.

With Online Engagement, there’s a real need for a community building approach.  Community building, and activist (and regional) support are not area’s to be neglected – they’re at the very base of the organisation’s work.  They’re also likely to give greater effect to the work staff undertake in the mid to long term. Learning how to interact in any given online community can be time consuming, but the time taken from adoption to productivity can be markedly reduced by utilising the expertise of individuals already immersed in specific online communities.  Allowing a level of autonomy for activists to lead and pursue a presence in these spaces is a good approach.  It’s basically empowering existing activists to promote and act as ambassadors for the organisation in the spaces they’re in.

Volunteers were already doing a lot of work on certain social network spaces with different levels of communication with the online team, who also manage presences in other online spaces.  The variation in activity levels may be an issue, providing irregular pattern of information flow, and discouraging regular patterns use by potential supporters. The situation may have been improved by allowing those volunteers with individual experience using these services to manage each site, with regular communication of the organisation’s priorities and new content.

Failure to engage

I personally had been able to get access to a great deal of information through working in volunteer roles in the preceding 18 months, but much of this was through my own initiative.  Identifying areas for growth which staff don’t have time to pursue then sourcing capable volunteers and activists to undertake these projects (with sufficient guidance) has a lot of potential.

Marketing is an important part of what the Online Team does, as is maintenance of the website itself, but I found a reluctance to do the community building and group coordinating work necessary for integrated online activism, based partly on the fact it lies outside the Online Team’s responsibility and also in the fact that they’re kept busy with their workload as is.

Community building is something that needs to be adequately resourced if NGOs are going to be relevant to an online community.  Inclusion for supporters at my host organisation is currently a very self-initiated thing.  Individuals often have to push for the information, access or involvement they’re after, and the challenge is to respond to this with an appropriately accommodating

conclusion

Non-government organisations, as with corporations, businesses and government, face new challenges with the changes being experienced in the online age.  The response to early obstacles and first steps towards new modes of engagement will decide a course, which may define their future success or failure.  Encouraging young minds, including Digital Native’s from within their movement in the development of strategy, and simply acknowledging the need for a different approach will set NGOs such as my host organisation on a path towards being better prepared to respond to these challenge.

Not-for-profits often have a significant resource in their volunteers and existing supporters, and the advent of a new age of interconnectedness and collaboration will serve to bring the skills and expertise of these community members within closer reach.  Managing relationships with these supporters will be a vital role for NGO staff working online in the future.