Social Citizens Makeover: Meet Chuck Warpehoski
Like any good makeover contest, we want to share a little about our five makeover winners before they are transformed into model (social) citizens. Starting today, we will profile each of our winners to give you the “before” picture. In a few months, we will report back with “after” stories to reveal how each of them has been impacted by the process.
Chuck Warpehoski, 30, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Chuck was initially drawn to the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice (ICPJ) by its ability to make the connection between faith and social justice. “Traditionally, faith has been part of social justice movements, from abolition to labor to peace,” says Chuck. “In the last few decades, the voice of religion in social life has been the voice of the religious right. ICPJ gives me a space to say ‘the religious right doesn't speak for me; I can be spiritual AND progressive. I can follow the examples of Dr. King, Dorothy Day, and the Berrigan brothers.’”
Chuck, who has now been involved with ICPJ for six years and now serves as its Director, is still passionate about the organization, whose programs include work on issues ranging from hunger to Middle East peace, because of the amazing community of volunteers, who give generously of their time, energy and resources to support the Council’s work. “It's really something special,” he says, “and I’m lucky to be part of it.”
Chuck is already using social media as well as traditional communication methods to reach constituents and potential partners and encourage them to attend events, participate in advocacy actions, and donate. ICPJ’s largest communication is a printed newsletter, sent five times a year to a list of about 1,800, but he would like to cut back on the newsletter list to save both trees and cash. ICPJ also sends weekly email newsletters and maintains a Facebook page and WordPress site.
He hopes the Social Citizens Makeover expert from Social Actions will help him learn to effectively use Facebook to connect with new people without overdoing it or turning people off. Chuck is also interested in learning to coordinate ICPJ’s different communications efforts to increase efficiency and to engage all of the organization’s contacts as active partners.
Comments
Hi Chuck,
Congratulations on winning the Social Citizens Makeover contest. I have enjoyed working with you over the last few weeks to develop a few social media recommendations for the Interfaith Council for Peace and (ICPJ).
Social Actions is recommending a Video and Facebook centered approach to attracting more (and younger) people to the work of ICPJ:
- Create a channel on YouTube, Blip.Tv, or Vimeo (the Flip Camera will work best on YouTube, but you are limited to shorter clips I believe.)
- Use the Flip camera to record and *immediately* post the videos (The less delay in getting the videos up, the more likely people will watch them - strange but true)
- Use the description of the video to promote the content and announce the next meeting
- Create a single presence on Facebook (Cause, Page, or Group). The 'page' offers rich demographics about who is joining.
- Engage social media savvy volunteers to help with online community building
- Host an e-newsletter on Constant Contact or Vertical Response (instead of DreamHost)
- Create a monthly cycle that connects event -> video -> Facebook / e-newsletter -> discussion -> next event
I am happy to walk you through any of the recommendations above. We'll get you up and running with any of the video platforms and a Facebook page.
Please let me know if you have any questions about these social media recommendations by posting a comment on this blog entry.
We will schedule a call for next week to discuss next steps on implementing these recommendations
All the best,
Peter
Peter Deitz
Social Actions
Thanks Peter. We've been working to try to implement your recommendations, but we've had a few hangups:
1. Video hosting: blip.tv is working well for us for videos shorter than 1 hour. For longer videos, we have had problems. They have a time limit for how long they will let their .avi to flash converter work on each video, and that runs out on us at about a 1-hour video. It's a real headache to spend 6 hours uploading a video only to find it won't convert, spend 4 hours trying to convert it to another format, and have that not work either. So we're still struggling with this one.
2. On a related note, I wanted to hear your comments about quantity vs quality of videos. For example, at a recent event, I decided to shoot a bunch of short clips rather than the whole event to get around the problem in point 1. But that raised another problem: finding the time to select and edit the posts. Do you recommend we just throw a bunch of stuff up their raw or that we take the time to curate and edit what we post?
3. I've looked at the functionality of the Facebook pages, groups, and causes, and I agree with your recommendation. It seems that pages offer the most features and best integrate with the new interface. Do you have any recommendations for migrating our current Facebook group members over to our page?
4. Farther down the line with our video posting (once we get issues 1 and 2 worked out), I would like to be able to include some sort of ICPJ branding on the video. Do you have any recommendations for video editing software?
5. We are still trying to figure out how to manage list segmentation and database integration when we switch from Dreamhost announcement list management to Vertical Response. We currently send out 2 types of emails: (1) regular announcement emails to people who have double opted-in to receive them, (2) targeted interest-specific emails to people who have single opted-in and expressed an interest. I'm still trying to figure out how we can give users control over how much email they get from us and have solid integration with our database. Not that we have it now, but it would be nice to plan that in to the migration :) I suspect it may take finding a developer to donate some time to do the programming to make it work.
I know these are a bunch of roadblocks, but we are making progress. I think once we get the editing/conversion/posting issues worked out with the videos, we should be able to get that working pretty smoothly.
(as a p.s., it did help to hear the other recommendations. It did prompt me to create a Twitter account and to put our website feed into our twitter account and Facebook page).
Here are my notes from my implementation call with Peter:
PROBLEM 1. blip.tv is not working well for us due to problems converting longer videos to flash format
RECOMMENDATION 1: Look into Vimeo (and also maybe DoGooder)
PROBLEM 2: quantity vs quality of videos, we will have a hard time getting videos up fast AND having high quality videos
RECOMMENDATION 2: Also, after each event ask panelists or speakers for short clips, get those up fast as a teaser for the full video
PROBLEM 3: migrating our current Facebook group members over to our page
RECOMMENDATION 3: Recruit a few leaders to the Facebook page, then message all Facebook group members. Message Facebook Group members every now and then to try to get them to move over.
PROBLEM 4: How to include branding and call to action overlays on online videos.
RECOMMENDATION 4: Use online video hosting tools (such as YouTubes) rather than desktop software.
PROBLEM 5: How to manage email segmentation/integration/double opt-ins.
RECOMMENDATION 5: This is a tough one. Check Salesforce and Vertical Response boards for conversations about this, as well as groups like idealist.com. Perhaps look into products such as Convio's Common Ground. Perhaps try to get a volunteer to code this.
OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS:
Peter recommended to put a lot of website space into promoting Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube feeds. BeExtra.org and the Case Foundation websites are good examples.
He also mentioned Facebook Page applications to integrate our YouTube and Flickr postings into our Facebook Page.
He also recommended that I blog about this process to add to the converstion and get additional feedback (and on that note this will also be posted at www.thewarpreport.org)
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