Organizations that work to promote safer schools through counseling, extracuricular activities, gun restrictions for youth, education, and anti-bullying programs.
Organizations that are providing humanitarian relief to Syrian refugees and, where possible, to civilians, and who have been calling for human rights and democratic reforms in Syria.
Below are organizations that are promoting clean and renewable energy and/or protesting the use of fossil fuels and environmentally damaging fuel mining practices.
While some may argue the relative merits of the tools, resources, and networks that connect you to your fans, supporters, and followers, there can be little argument that some sort of strategy is needed to help coordinate and prioritize these efforts, The belief that "If I simply post that video on YouTube, we will build our fan base," will make your cause as visible as the proverbial tree in the forest. If you use Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other channels to promote your video, but lack strategy, your audience will be roughly the size of your current fanbase, if that.
So, what's the key to growing your fanbase through your media efforts?
The answer is (drumroll, please) timing. Timing is everything.
Sixty hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. To compete in this media saturated environment, I often preach that NGOs should be a channel, continually pumping out information, telling stories about who they are and what they do. But creating content is only half the battle. A video is useless if it isn’t seen or isn’t seen by the right people. And this is especially true when talking about video for social or environmental change. So, how do we cut through the noise, rise to the top and ensure our videos make a difference? The answer is strategic distribution.
Nonprofit organizations were noticeably absent from the MediaBistro Semantic Tech Event, held in Washington DC early this month. The steep admission cost may have had a lot to do with it. I suspect it was also due to the fact that the meaning and implications of the semantic web have not been understood by many people outside of a very small cluster who have embraced it since World Wide Web Founder Tim Berners-Lee announced at TED in 2009 his idea, (outlined years earlier in the journal Nature). He argued that it would be useful if the internet did more than hold unrelated documents--if it instead began to hold more data, and link related data together in a logical framework.
Liz Norton stated Stone Soup Films two years ago with two volunteers she found on Craigslist. Now, the DC-based nonprofit that matches volunteer videographers and editors with nonprofits in need has an arsenal of hundreds of volunteers and has made over 13 projects for DC-area nonprofits in need.
While there are still challenges to overcome in getting nonprofit organizations to understand the value of video as a critical communications tool in the new, more visual and immediate online fundraising environment, Norton said that her organization has had an overwhelming response from the nonprofit community and from funders who recognize the potential for video in raising awareness about issues and the organizations who are addressing them.
According to the United Nations, the aim of World Food Day is to "heighten public awareness of the world food problem and strengthen solidarity in the struggle against hunger, malnutrition and poverty." Since malnutrition is the greatest single threat to the world's public health according to the World Health Organization, it is a very important day indeed.
What gains have been made in fight against hunger and malnutrition?
The good news is that, looking over the long-term there has been a lot of progress - the percentage of malnourished people has declined from 37% of the world's population in 1970 to 16% two years ago in 2009.
It was an exciting week at the Social Good Summit. We heard Ted Turner, Lance Armstrong, Serena Williams (the newest UN Goodwill Ambassador), and an impressive line-up of journalists, politicians, actors, and business executives all weighing in about how social media have helped to change, reframe, and advance our collective approach to solving the world’s challenges
