Driving In Traffic

As many of you know, I started blogging in 2005 for business at the encouragement of a close friend. The blogging bug bit me and bit me hard. What started as an academic experiment to boost the company’s google juice, eventually took me to places I never expected and led me to a wonderful set of friends and colleagues.

My enthusiasm over the potentials of this relatively new technology morphed me into an evangelist that had me trying to convince those I met that they, too, could use the technology. Subsequently, over time I began working with people and organizations to help them set up a blog and a successful strategy for meeting their goals.

In the past, I have been hesitant about soliciting for business, given that I had so much on my plate already. Honestly, in hindsight, it just wasn’t the time. However, now the journey that began with me starting the business blog, launching my personal blog (here), then launching my do-good blog, and now being invited to participate in the iVillage social network issues related to philanthropy and giving back, has led me to a place where my confidence that I can help is getting close to being equal with my desire to help.
For a while now, I’ve known that I was on a path toward doing something new. Being one that loves structure and routine I’ve struggled against it. However, the recent technology trials and tribulations with my domain name and blog hosting- gave me the cosmic kick in the pants to get off my duff and try to do what I really want to do— help healthcare and nonprofit organizations use social media strategies to boost their communications internally and externally, with the goal of building stronger relationships.

So with that said and the emotional support of my family (Jump in the water is fine.)— I’m taking the leap. www.drivingintraffic.com will be the online homebase for my services and consulting. Subsequently, with the change in URL of this blog, comes a change in focus.

Drivingintrafficblog.com will now really focus on supporting the efforts of my consulting. As much as I hate to say it– it will likely become more wonky but hopefully not too boring. However being more of a woman of action rather than musing about what can be done, I will still have the business blog and the do-good blog to give me real and genuine experience of the spaces I want to help others join.

I look forward to the new opportunities and meeting new folks on the path ahead.

I just read a Reuters article by Ben Herschler on the potential influence of the Gates Foundation on the pharma industry. A quick quotation to get you started:

“The billions of dollars thrown at global health problems by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are changing the game in drug discovery, posing big challenges to the world’s top drugmakers, according to a report on Tuesday.

Pharmaceutical information group IMS Health Inc. said the emergence of megabuck philanthropy was both a threat and a collaboration opportunity for manufacturers.

“Pharma companies need to develop an explicit strategy to deal with this phenomenon,” IMS said in its annual Intelligence.360 report on factors shaping the industry.”

Now my day job is in healthcare and I’ve done a lot of work with the pharma industry over my career. I have helped with clinical research, written patient education materials and consulted on launch strategies and professional education efforts on new treatments.

Yes– major philanthropic associations can do a lot to bolster the research efforts of pharma. Additionally, pharma gets good karma points for partnering with good causes. Nonetheless, one must always remember that in economics and business, nothing is ever free. Afterall, today’s new era of empowered philanthropy, generous giving rarely means “without strings.”

Just looking forward: How will pharma handle the philanthropist’s demands for affordable prices on these new treatments that they have helped to bring to market? Afterall, right now most new treatments are priced based mostly on what the market will bear and competitor prices, rather than any real analytical plan to recoup costs plus a reasonable profit.

Or will philanthropic organizations require a “return on investment” when partnering. If so, what would this look like?

Not to leave out the megabuck philanthropies, I also have questions for them. What happens when an ethical question comes up about the research on a treatment? How will you ensure that your altruistic and philanthropic missions are not compromised by a greedy and immoral few? All it takes is one poorly designed study, one failure to disclose financial relationships, or one questionable and tragic death to occur in one of those studies to ruin all the good work being done.

We need only look back as far as 1933 and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study to see how unethical research can ruin the trust of individuals who need care. Growing up and working in the south, I have seen the unfortunate legacy of this experiment. I have personally heard many African Americans voice suspicions and be doubtful of treatment offered to them. Some people going so far as to avoid doctors and hospitals at all costs and dying because they refused to seek treatment. I can only imagine what would happen if something similar happened in AIDS/HIV ravaged areas. It could completely undo all the work being done and send us tumbling toward the loss of multiple generations of people who really deserve better.

As some of you may know, I sit on the board of an animal rescue group in Atlanta.

If you actually drop by my site in person, you will see a number of items in my sidebar. However, for my friends who read me via my Feed, I kindly ask that you consider donating $10 to the Six Degree’s badge I’ve created for them.

If you are not familiar, SixDegrees is a joint undertaking of the Network for Good and Kevin Bacon to raise money through social media for nonprofit organizations. The six organizations that have the most number of people donating will have their donations matched by Mr. Kevin Bacon, himself.

Boy— would I love for our organization to win. We are an all-volunteer organization that rescues dogs from death row and finds them homes (BTW– over 70,000 animals in Atlanta are put to death each year because they can’t find a home).

Thus I am asking you kind folk to please consider helping me and Our Pals Place out. Click here to donate. Because it is the number of people who donate that counts most, I’m just asking that you donate the Network for Good minimum of $10.
I’d love to put the badge in the post, but it keeps knocking off the formatting of my blog. However, if you would like to put it on your site, you can get the code by clicking here and

I’d be forever in your debt for any help you can provide.

Tags: Our Pal’s Place Network For Good Six Degrees Kevin Bacon Animal Rescue Dogs

As my mentor and friend Toby Bloomberg says: “Blogging is about relationships and community.” After a 16 months participating in the blogosphere, I have been able to meet and get to know a host of others who share my interests and who have taught me a few things.

One of those people is Nedra Kline Weinreich. She’s smart, witty, creative and has a good heart, to boot. She has a real knack of communicating social marketing how-tos to inspire positive changes in behavior with the goal of improving health or creating social change.

Nedra is holding a training session on March 28-30 in Washington DC. She has set up a Squidoo Page to give information about the agenda and the content. If you can’t go, then consider purchasing her book from this page– as squidoo will donate a portion to a charity of Nedra’s choice. Plus it will get you started thinking in a whole new way!

Held in conjuction with the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, some of the training highlights of the seminar include:

• How social marketing uses commercial marketing tools to create behavior change
• How to think like a social marketer
• How to develop a strategy using the 8 Ps of the social marketing mix
• How to design effective messages and materials
• How to work with the media to get your message out through news and entertainment programming
• How to use cutting-edge technologies to put the new media to work for you
• How to get the most out of your social marketing budget — even if it’s small

Given all the work I’ve got piled up for the non-profit I’m a part of and my other blog, I wish I could go. However, right now significant travel is just not in the budget (time or money). However, if Nedra comes to Atlanta— I’m so IN! and I’m dragging some friends! Hint!!! Hint!!!

However in the honor code of BBF-edness (Best Blogging Friends) and fellow RUSH fan-edness (The Band not the simpleminded pundit–no google juice for him!), Nedra has generously created a cool coupon so that DIT readers can get a little savings if they can attend. You get $75 off of registration if you register and use the code: DIT75    Cool Huh!!!

Tags: Social Marketing University Nedra Kline Weinreich Social Change Nonprofits conferences Washington DC

The first edition of The Giving Carnival is up at Tactical Philanthropy. 

Spurred on by the recent LA Times article on the Gates Foundation, drop by and see what a bunch of experts in philanthropy (who kindly allowed my alter blog ego and philanthropy neophyte to participate) have to say about the investment practices of large foundations.     

The blogosphere is all a-buzz about an end of the year major magazine publishing tradition. Apparently, I have won the award this year. Read about it from my fellow bloggers: here, here, here, here, here, here .

My response:

Thank you for the thought, but I must respectfully decline.

OK– social media is giving us all new tools to connect with one another and is having an impact business and media. I don’t argue that. However, in the whole scheme of things, I think the selection is a little rediculous. (However, I must respect the magazine’s savvy use of the social media to to generate a buzz and hopefully newsstand purchases). In the magazine’s defense, at least they did not pick some celebrity disgrace— imagine the sales if they had used that picture of Britney Spears on the day she obviously should have been at home doing the laundry.

Since I’m turning down the award, I’d like to propose someone to stand in my stead. I think these types of things should be given to people who make a difference for the better and give me hope that humankind isn’t going to Hell in a handbasket.

I think I’d like to give my award to:

Matt and Jessica Flannery, founders of Kiva. Kiva is an online microfinance portal. The philosophy behind microfinancing is that you loan small amounts of money to people in third world countries or to people with little or no ability to borrow money to start a self-sustaining business. These types of loans are ones that can eventually lift people out of poverty and allow them to feed and clothe their family.

More on the nominees can be found here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

The Kiva Blog can be found here.

I’ve always loved the idea of microfinance and now Kiva makes it easy to have a trusted way to help people whose stories tug at your heart.

OK– now it is your turn. Please chime in with a comment or a trackback. Let this be a meaningful meme that outgrows the buzz of the clearly empty, attention-seeking actions taken by this publication (which I refuse to name or link to –afterall, they do not need any more buzz). Also please tell your friends about this as I have chosen not to tag this post in any way that would garner more attention for ‘you know who.’

I’ve just finished setting up a Squidoo lens to support my Dollar Philanthropy Blog. Drop by, give it a spin and let me know what you think. Did I forget something? Any ideas for improvement?

In my previous post, I presented the first part of an interview with Michael Hoffman, CEO of See3 the parent company of DoGooderTV. To catch you up: DoGooderTV is a video hosting site, similar to YouTube, specifically for non-profit organizations. What follows is the rest of the interview with Michael.

Carol: What is the social networking aspect of DoGooder TV and what advantages does it have for nonprofits?

Michael: We believe the social networking idea has legs, and not only for MySpace. Our goal with DoGooderTV is to allow people who get excited about an organization’s mission, to share this excitement with their friends, and to seek out others who share their interest. We need a mechanism for “friends telling friends” and then to begin to rely on their friends opinions of worthy causes and organizations.

Relatively few Americans donate money to non-religious nonprofits. If social networking can be tapped to get people to act we are all for it and we want to be a leader in this regard. I must say there are others doing social networks built about issues, such as progressive politics. Where we think we will add something is that our network will be built around video, which we think is a much more interesting frame of reference than say, annual reports.

Carol: Is this a service that is best suited for large, national nonprofits? If so why? If not, why not?

Michael: We have thought a lot about this question. On the one hand, large national nonprofits have likely invested more money in more video, and so they will have a leg up. On the other hand, small nonprofits with a single great video piece will likely benefit disproportionally from being in front a new audience. The large national nonprofits already are reaching lots of people through lots of marketing efforts. The small nonprofit who has a video that gets the attention of a national audience will see a much larger percentage impact.

Carol: How hard is it to create a quality video? Is it something that is within reach of small to medium sized nonprofits?

Michael: Not so hard! A great example is David Pogue from the New York Times. With a home camera and a tripod and free or low-cost software, Pogue makes great little videos about technology subjects. Go to nytimes.com and search for video and take a look. The great thing about YouTube and the explosion of online video is that people now do not expect everything to be super-produced and nonprofits need to take advantage of that.

We offer training to organizations so that staff can produce decent video. It is amazing what half-a-day of training can do.

While professional video is not cheap, I think nonprofits need to look at what they spend on print material and consider whether they would get more bang for the buck with video. There are other things organizations can do that are cost effective, for example, we help organizations create slide shows with voice. Great photos and a compelling voice over can be produced inexpensively and have similar impact to video.

Carol: What is the basic equipment needed for making a video and what tips would you give non-profits for creating a good video?

Michael: Obviously you need a video camera to make any video. There are lots of great cameras out there and I won’t get into specific brands. There are decent choices at every price point. Why spent $3,000 when you can spend $300? In addition to the picture quality, the big thing to think about is sound. People will watch bad video with good sound, they will not watch good video with bad sound. One thing you get with higher cost camera is the ability to have external sound inputs.

In terms of tips, we are working on some video tutorials and hope to have them on the See3 and DoGooderTV sites in a few months. We also offer full-service production as well as camera training and handling equipment purchases. If this is something you believe you need to be doing, See3 can help you get there with a combination of internal organizational resources and our professionals when needed.

Carol: What is the promotion plan for DoGooderTV?

Michael: We are planning an aggressive PR strategy as the primary way to educate individuals about the site. We have a strategy and a staff that will work MySpace, Facebook and other social networks, inviting those with expressed interest in specific issues to come see the video on DGTV relevant to their interest. We also expect that many of our nonprofits will promote the site to their constituents, as a way to showcase their videos, and because they understand that the growth of the whole community benefits all of the participating organizations.

If we look at the growth of other social networks and video sites, the viral aspects and word of mouth are clearly the biggest factor in community growth. If the content is good, and there is enough of it, I am confident the people will be there.

So, in terms of promotion, much of our efforts now are spreading the word among organizations and gathering video.

Since our Alpha site went up in February we have received submissions and interest from a wide range of nonprofits, over 100, who have begun to hear about us through blogs and word-of-mouth. We are on target to have more than 150 organizations on board before the end of October, which is the goal we set for ourselves.

We are now working, with the American University’s Center for Social Media, on the first nonprofit video festival. The festival is being designed as an annual event to attract and honor the best of nonprofit video and to give nonprofits a showcase for all the great video that is out there. We are talking to a wide range of co-sponsors and we will let you know when we have an official announcement with more details. Of course, all the video submitted for the festival will be on DoGooderTV, which will act as the official site of the festival. We believe that the festival, the reach of the cosponsors and the PR it will generate will bring in more video than we have been able to attract thus far.

~~~~~~~

DoGooderTV is in Alpha release right now. Michael says that they expect to roll out the beta release in November 2006. Some of the new functionality that will be available with the beta is the social networking portion and nonprofits will be able to directly upload video and categorize those videos. Michael suggests that future functions will be guided by the nonprofit customers they serve.

Tags:DoGooderTV, nonprofit, YouTube, fundraising, Social Networking,

I happened across the website DoGooder TV at the beginning of September. I looked around and was intriqued by what I saw.

I quickly shot off an e-mail to see if I could find out more. In the true beauty of the blogosphere and this delightful time of new businesses understanding the value of interactive marketing, I was delighted when I got a message back from Michael Hoffman, the CEO of See3, the parent company of DoGooder TV.

Now– Michael is no slouch (quite an entrepreneur and has significant nonprofit experience) and he’s got quite an impressive set of talent working with him. He also seems to be a nice fellow who really has a genuine passion for nonprofits, causes and the social sector. I think like many of us, he sees the exciting and emerging potential for interactive and social media to really transform how DoGooder’s do business.

So I’ll share our discussion…

Carol: Tell me about the business and philosophy behind See3.

Michael:I was a nonprofit fundraiser in Washington, responsible for about $10 million in annual gifts from mostly family foundations. What stuck with me was that there is a gap, sometimes small, sometime huge, between what a donor sees and what the hard-working people on the ground were doing. We had these study tours, where donors could go to the places where the work was happening, meet the people on the ground, get inspired. These were so powerful and the folks who went on these trips were always the most dedicated supporters, even if they didn’t start out that way. Of course only a small percentage of people were able to participate in these tours and I have always been thinking about how we can close the gap between the daily work and the information nonprofits get out to their stakeholders.

Post-bubble 2001 I [was] looking for something to do and my friends at the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation asked if I could do some consulting about nonprofits and technology. Then I was asked to build a website and ended up building a web development shop, specializing in working with nonprofits, that now has 20 employees.

About a year-and-a-half ago my partner Danny Alpert and I had that eureka moment. I was telling him that the web is changing, that broadband will change how we think about the web and websites. That the broadband web was not the same as the web we have known until now. That what I do as a web development company for nonprofits will change quickly. I told him that, mark-my-words, we will be seeing video all over the web very soon.

Danny, an Academy Award and Emmy Award nominated filmmaker, [PBS film (A Doula Story) (http://www.adoulastory.org)] was telling me how film, emotionally powerful stories, can move people to action and be the centerpiece of campaigns to raise money, raise awareness and educate. See3 was born from this conversation.

The company combines my experience on the web and Danny’s experience as a filmmaker. Our philosophy is that organizations need to think beyond the gala dinner video and understand that the web opens up many additional opportunities to use video. That not every video needs to be super-produced, and that media materials – audio, video and photography – need to take more and more of those print budgets.

Carol: What is DoGooder TV and how did it come about?

Michael:Our clients have said to us, how do we maximize the investment we are making in video? We make a great video, and we show it at our events, and then what? Our answer to this question is what lead us to the development of DoGooderTV.

First, we tell people that when they produce video for their gala dinner, for example, that they also need to create additional videos from the same footage. For example, that dinner video might have three stories in it, and these three stories can live independently integrated into different sections of your website, or attached to your regular e-newsletter. Once they have this material, we show them how to bring stakeholders to these videos by integrating it into their existing communications programs.

We have answered that question in a couple ways. First, we help organizations get their video on YouTube and MySpace and Google Video and all of the other free places to post video. But lets be honest – if you don’t have a super-compelling, edgy, snarky, funny, video – then no one will see you on YouTube, except the people you send there.

Many organizations have raised another point about these sites; Does putting our video – which deals with serious subjects – among videos of stupid pet tricks and teenagers lip-synching to some heavy metal song, help us? Is this good for our brand? Is there a place where grown-ups who are interested in things that matter go to see video online?

That’s how we got to DoGooderTV. A place where the audience has a proven interest in issues and the organizations working on those issues. We can call them more qualified leads, to use marketing language. For us, the nonprofit is our client, and DoGooderTV is being created to service their interests.The primary interest of organizations in this regard is exposure to people who are likely to become interested, to act on policy questions, to donate, and to other wise get involved.

Carol: What can DoGooder TV do for nonprofits?

Michael: DoGooderTV is being built as a community for people who care about issues and organizations. Our goal is to bring this qualified audience into the work of organizations through. Once emotionally hooked by watching their videos, the audience will be able to act – to donate, sign-up or learn more.

DoGooderTV gives all of those gala dinner videos a new lease on life, and organizations a way to leverage the existing investments they have made in video material by getting it in front of new audiences.

• In addition, DoGooderTV will be supported through sponsorship. The sponsorship revenue will be split, 50-50, with the nonprofits who post video.

• Best of all… we will be syndicating nonprofit video content across the web! We are very excited about this. The DoGooderTV audience will decide what videos they like the most. These videos (and PSAs) will then be made available, at no charge to the nonprofit, across a network of video web sites. This video network currently has 50 million members and includes the sites of major media companies. All of our legal agreements are not in place yet, so I can’t give more details than this, but those organizations that take the time and effort to create good video content will be rewarded with large audiences.

• And, last but certainly not least, DoGooderTV will allow nonprofits to embed their video, without sponsorship, within their own websites on a pay-as-you-go basis. Meaning, organizations can post all their video to DoGooderTV and any piece they want on their own site can be moved with a few clicks. This high-quality hosting (built on the Akamai network) will be available to organizations so they can have a single integrated hosting source.

Carol: What is your biggest dream for DoGooderTV?

Michael:My biggest dream is that DoGooderTV leads to a kind of renaissance in nonprofit support in this country, attracting millions of people who otherwise would not be exposed to the great work being done and moves them to donate and get involved.

A smaller dream is to move the nonprofit world to understand the benefits of video and, through DoGooderTV, see a real increase in nonprofit investment in this kind of communications program.

We want to be able to say, look at what our work did for this organization. See how they grew, see how they were able to achieve their mission through the support of people who experienced their work through video.

~~~~~~

Michael was quite generous with his time and I have much more to share with you– so please stay tuned for for part 2. In the meantime, if you are a nonprofit organization interested in looking into this new way of getting the word out about your organization, please drop by DoGooderTV .

Please know that more features will be launched in November 2006.

Tags: DogooderTV, Michael Hoffman, YouTube, Videos, Nonprofits, Social media, charity

It is with a great Hoorah! that I’m excited to announce that Our Pal’s Place: Promoting the Adoption Option blog is up and going.

For those of you who don’t know, I am on the board of Our Pal’s Place, a no-kill animal shelter and education center in Metro Atlanta. My focus within the organization has morphed a bit since our first meetings almost 4 years ago. Now, my job is to develop a development and marketing strategy. I for the last 7 or 8 months I’ve been a big yapper about the role of blogs in our organization. The road to this day has been quite intriquing.

In the beginning, there was some skepticsm about blogs because of an experience that some of our board members had after they went to New Orleans for Katrina animal rescue efforts. At that time, a few bloggers drew them into a fire fight by highlighting some of the events that had occurred. Subsequently, they did not want our blog to be an organizational firestorm.

However as we have taken small steps, many of my colleagues have taken the time to learn a little bit about blogs and to visit and read a couple. The biggest winning features of blogs was that it was a way to keep people informed without having to constantly e-mail people. The idea that people could subscribe to feeds and get information on demand and in a preferred format was quite appealing to folks who got tons of e-mail for work.

We’re still working on some of the technical stuff. We decided to use wordpress due to cost issues as well as the ability to interface it with our domain. I use wordpress here so I was familiar with making edits to the template, but I’ve had to have help with some of the coding and permissions. Thankfully our web guy is a great friend, knowledgable, and has suffered me well. There is some tinkering to do, but I’m feeling ok about what we’ve got up now.

So for those of you who would like to offer some constructive tips, please drop by the OPP blog and come back here to leave me a comment on how to make it better.

Gracias Senors and Senoras-