Social Media @ Work

In the matter of a few short years, the use of social media has transformed the way many institutions interact with their constituents. Gone are the days when a museum-goer’s sole point of a contact with a venerable organization is a ticket ripped by a guard stationed in the lobby. These days, that same culture-hungry wanderer can use Twitter to not only inquire about opening hours or offerings, she can also use any number of burgeoning social networks to register her approval or dismay with institutional decisions as major as the composition of an advisory board or as insignificant as a paint color change.

Maybe it’s not surprising then that the diverse notions of social decision-making and crowd-sourcing are entering the realm of philanthropy and fundraising. Splashy new campaigns backed bymajor corporations Chase and Pepsi were designed around the premise that the crowd should help determine how to distribution a rather large pool of funds.  As these “competitions” take grant-making decision out of the hands of a high-level governing body and ostensibly into the hands of the people, they threaten to upend tradition fundraising dynamics and expose conflicts among the professional dedicated to the social good through their work in the nonprofit space.

I have participated in two such processes via Chase Community Giving and the Jenzabar Foundation’s Social Media Leadership Grant initiative, and learned first hand the pitfalls and perils of the new vogue for “vote for me” contests.

From the perspective of the corporate sponsor, these contests have an obvious appeal and instant PR value. “We don’t just give money away to our favorite causes,” they say, “we value our audience enough to let them decide the most worthy charities.” Pepsi’s Refresh project further blurs the line by seeking to sponsor not only recognized 501c3s, but also any “great ideas” that fall into any one of six issue areas.

The notion of charging community with anointing the best and most socially conscious ideas within it sounds laudable in theory, too. Social media has elevated a number of grass-roots efforts in the past, and these community-powered contests seem like they have plenty of potential to lift up the struggling but worthy smaller nonprofit.

But with some entrants in the recently closed Chase Community Giving contest facing accusations of fraud, it’s worth it to try and and understand some of the objections and controversies that have arisen due to this new style of grantmaking in the age of online community:

• Cutthroat competition encourages unethical behavior and draws some bad actors out of the woodwork.
• The contests don’t really reward the best or most worthy ideas; rather they favor those with the most tenacious desire to “win.”
• “Vote for me” contests add to the noise in an already challenging landscape for fundraising professionals.

The first two issues were certainly something I witnessed first-hand during my experience with the Jenazbar Foundation process. Though I don’t want to knock the Jenzabar Foundation for their worthwhile idea, a contest to find a nonprofit with the most forward-thinking strategies in social media quickly devolved into a frenzy of questionable behavior by some of the participants. With no way to verify that vote comments were coming from unique IP addresses, entrants who were not even able to attract more that two dozen twitter followers suddenly had hundreds of votes. Also, outfits that weren’t even legitimate nonprofits were competing for the prize money.

So can online community and social media have a legitimate and valuable role to play in the grant-making process? I’d like to think so, but I think notions of how community should influence the process can develop in an intelligent and measured way. There are already some great ideas on how to do it out there, such as Kickstarter, which equips grant-seekers with social tools that aid in their proposals, and then encourages them to make the appeal directly to donors in the public. Unlike “vote for me” contest, Kickstarter projects rely on supporters putting their money where their mouths are, and actually kicking in some support dollars. With unsavory behavior plaguing some of the bigger competitions, this distinction between voting for a project and truly supporting it is crucial. Perhaps Kickstarter would be a natural place for major corporations to begin a matching grants program?

I’d also like to see grantmaking organizations find a way to harness community tools to enhance their existing initiatives. In building communities online for certain key groups—let’s say for example students, community organizers or neighborhood bloggers—grant-giving organizations can gain critical intelligence on the worthiness of their proposals and their potential to affect social change.

Because these crowd-sourcing initiatives brought forth by major corporations are so new, it’s only natural that there would be a steep learning curve–along with some unfortunate bad behavior on the part of some of the participants. In order to make community part of the process of grant-making, it’s essential that corporate sponsors attempt to find a balance between seeking community input and finding the best ideas–and not just the winners of a popularity contest.

This post is tagged Chase Community Giving, crowd-sourcing, kickstarter