nonprofit

For six years now, the DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards has been shining a spotlight on all the innovative ways that nonprofits use video. The contest is about moving the field of nonprofit video forward and encouraging cause video creators to try new approaches that make their work different.

Different is just what The Case Foundation is looking for in this year's contest. Did you experiment? Take risks? Did you highlight a failure from your past that's helping shape the future? Share a big idea that will inspire others to dream big? Were you... Fearless? If so, the Case Foundation wants to reward your organization! 

This year, the Case Foundation is awarding one $2,500 grant to the organization with the most fearless video in each of the four categories, as selected by a panel of special judges.

These special grants will recognize those nonprofit video creators who aren’t afraid to deviate from the norm, use innovative approaches and fearlessly tell compelling, honest stories that are from the heart. Fearless video means taking risks and trying new approaches for the sake of creating moving content that inspires the viewer. We recognize that nonprofits are fearlessly making new and interesting video everyday and we want to see more!

There’s no better time than right now to enter your video to win great prizes like these special grants from the Case Foundation as well as cash prizes and products from Cisco, free registrations to next year’s NTC from NTEN and your video on the YouTube homepage on April 5, 2012.

To enter the awards, just visit the contest website by February 29, 2012, and submit your video. Winners will be announced by See3 Communications on April 5, 2012.

Last year’s contest was a record setter with almost 1,400 submissions from over 800 nonprofit organizations and record breaking views on the website. It’s incredible to think of all the great work the participating organizations submitted. See past winners here to get inspired. So what are you waiting for? Enter today. Just log into your org's youtube account and submit your best work from the past year.

Visit the official contest homepage on YouTube.

Welcome to our special guest blog post series -"Millennial Perspectives: Voices of a Giving Generation." We hope you will join us each week until the Millennial Donor Summit on June 22, 2011, as we explore Millennial engagement with a variety of leading experts and practitioners.

This week, we've invited Daniel Kaufman, Co-Founder of the One Percent Foundation as well as Co-Founder of Third Plateau Social Impact Strategies, a consulting firm that helps nonprofits develop and implement Millennial engagement strategies, to provide his take on how to tackle engagement barriers when it comes to fundraising, engagement and advocacy.

If you are reading this, you likely fall into one of two categories: either you work at a nonprofit or you are a Millennial (I’m hoping a large percentage of you are both!). As such, I’m guessing one of the following two scenarios sounds familiar:

If you are a nonprofit: You are sitting around a conference room table trying to figure out how to make your budget for the year. You and your dedicated, underpaid coworkers are trying to figure out the quickest, most effective fundraising strategy so that your organization can focus on changing the world. Inevitably you realize that you can get the most bang for your buck by focusing on major donors and large foundations. It certainly doesn’t make sense to invest time cultivating Millennials who might write a $50 check.

If you are a Millennial: You care about giving back, but you either don’t think you can afford to make a donation, don’t know which organizations are effective, and/or you don’t think you can achieve impact with your small donation. Most importantly, organizations that you might care about aren’t asking you to engage in a meaningful way. As a result, much of your giving tends to be in response to friends asking you to sponsor them in a race or support them at a fundraiser.

If we were on Craigslist, both sides would be posting under the category of Nonprofit-Millennial Missed Connections. Most nonprofits need operating funds now and can’t justify investing in Millennial donor cultivation that pays off over the long-term. Most Millennials take this lack of communication as meaning that nonprofits don’t value their engagement. The two parties seek each other but don’t actually talk to one another.

The findings in the Millennial Donors Report underscore the opportunity if we can change this reality. Millennials are eager to engage, so long as they have a trustworthy partner—whether that trust comes from the endorsement of their social networks, organizational transparency, or access to organizational leadership. This begs the question: How do Millennials and nonprofits work together to build and leverage trust?

Enter the One Percent Foundation (OPF), a Millennial-driven solution to the Missed Connection problem, one that seeks to empower Millennials to give in a sustained, generous, and strategic manner. OPF runs a network of online giving circles that engage Millennials earning an income for the first time. We seek to train, educate and engage our participants to use their limited resources to fund the ideas, organizations, and innovation that they are passionate about. Ultimately, OPF is building a broad-based movement of Millennial philanthropists that challenges the status quo by democratizing giving.

OPF’s giving circle model is relatively straightforward. Participants register online, commit to give at least one percent of their annual income to philanthropic causes, and establish monthly recurring donations through our website. We aggregate participants’ giving and facilitate a crowd-sourced, participatory grantmaking program whereby participants identify, assess, and ultimately select grant recipients. The One Percent Foundation program tackles the three key barriers to meaningful Millennial participation (affordability, knowledge, and impact). 

Embedded in OPF’s grantmaking process is the notion that our process breeds trust and thereby reinforces engagement. The first step of an OPF grant cycle is a nomination period whereby anyone in the OPF community (Millennials giving 1%) can recommend an organization to the circle. During the second phase, a small group of volunteers from the OPF community are trained to conduct due diligence on the nominated organizations. This “working group” speaks to staff members of the nominated nonprofits, examines theories of change, vets the organizations’ financials, and conducts independent research. OPF facilitates a conversation with the working group to narrow all of the nominees to five finalists. During the final phase, OPF educates the entire community about the finalists and asks them to vote online. The two organizations that receive the most votes receive a grant from OPF.

OPF’s grantmaking process tackles the three fundamental trust concerns of Millennials: organizations are only considered after they are endorsed by someone in the social network, nominees are vetted by the community, and participants get access to organizational leaders.

Ultimately, OPF is nothing more than a design solution to the Nonprofit-Millennial Missed Connection problem. We have created the conditions for Millennials to be able to easily access information and interact with nonprofits so they feel comfortable giving proactively.

I invite you to join me for my session at the Millennial Donor Summit on June 22 to learn more about the One Percent Foundation and how OPF and other creative solutions can enable nonprofits to better engage Millennials.

It's no surprise that the economic downturn has presented new challenges for many in the nonprofit sector. But as organizations faced tough decisions over how to cut costs, raise new funds and maintain their mission, some nonprofits began to consider new opportunities as well. Although not often a popular solution among nonprofit leaders, some nonprofits even began to think creatively about how strategic partnerships, mergers and acquisitions might improve their efficiency, reach and services.

Early this year, a pair of Millennial-led organizations chose this path less traveled, and Mobilize.org announced that it would acquire Generation Engage. We wrote about the announcement on Social Citizens, and speculated that this decision to rock the boat would ultimately pay off for the organizations and the Millennials they serve. Now almost a year later, I asked Mobilize CEO Maya Enista to give us her honest take on the growing pains, obstacles, triumphs and benefits of a nonprofit acquisition.

What was the most important factor that set you up for a successful acquisition?

In retrospect, I’m extremely impressed with how well executed the acquisition was. For this, I think Justin Rockefeller and Decker Ngongang, the leadership of Generation Engage, deserve the most credit. They were clear on their commitment to increase the impact and reach of their network and they recognized that Mobilize.org was a good partner in that.

Another important factor that was essential to our success was our ability to articulate our expectations and requests; whether it’s that a logo color change or a staff member’s salary be maintained, we created a comprehensive MOU [(memorandum of understanding)] that outlined everything so we went into the relationship clear on benefits, potential challenges and next steps.

To any organization considering a similar move, I strongly suggest the detailed MOU over the unnecessarily long, legal contract which often does not speak to how staff members will talk about the acquisition/merger, who will hold relationships, what will happen to emails and how the culture of the organization will be maintained or how the history of both organizations will be respected.

What challenges or sacrifices have Mobilize.org and Generation Engage had to face to make this work?

There was significant work to be done, legally, in transferring trademarks and other assets but we had a wonderful team (legal and financial) working with us to make this a smooth process. The challenge that I most worried about was how to integrate the programming and network of Generation Engage into Mobilize.org in a way that was authentic, to both groups, and how the staff members would come together under one umbrella. I was pleasantly surprised on both counts and we now have an even larger, active and engaged network that is managed by a talented, passionate staff that is comprised of former Generation Engage staff members, long-time Mobilize.org staff members and new team members who have joined since the acquisition.

There are definitely times when we needed to clarify roles, needed to change our vocabulary and practice our talking points, but when Decker and I are both asked often to “spill the dirt” on the acquisition and we always laugh about it. We’re very fortunate to have a partnership of mutual admiration, respect and working towards a common goal to make our collective work stronger than the sum of our parts. Most importantly, we have fun and never lose sight of how fortunate we are.

What has been challenging for you personally as the leader of this transition?

Significant growth, literally, happened over night. I went from managing a team of three to a team of eight and a budget that almost doubled. It was an exciting time, although at times, overwhelming. I credit the Board of Directors of Mobilize.org in helping me navigate this opportunity and ensuring that I think through (and prepare for) every possible scenario. I have learned a great deal about organizational management, what I do well, what I do not do well and most importantly, how important it is to appreciate your colleagues and praise them for their unique contributions to our work.

What has the merger allowed you to do?

Work proactively. It’s been such a blessing. I’ve spent a long time working reactively; to funding requests, to media, moving from event to event, and at times – losing sleep about payroll. Due to the increased support, capacity and funding, we’ve been able to take a step back and ask ourselves important questions about our impact, how we’re telling our story, what we’re doing each day (week, month, year) to increase opportunity, access, relationships and resources for Millennials through our work.

What advice do you have for other nonprofits considering a similar move?

DO IT. There’s too much work to be done, and we need to be smart about how we do it and most importantly, we need to do it together. Coincidentally, I’m writing about this on the heels of an interesting article in Fast Company, written by a woman whose work, opinion and energy I admire greatly, Nancy Lublin (Founder of Dress for Success and currently, CEO of DoSomething.org). She hits the nail on the head when she says, we need to work to put ourselves out of business by SOLVING problems, not measure our success of how large our staff is or how much our budget grows. Nonprofit collaborations, true collaborations, are rare and acquisitions and mergers, are even more so and I know it sounds scary, or suspiciously like failure, but it’s not about your ego, or the logo, or what your organization is called – it’s about the work that we (the royal, non-profit we) have ahead of us.

I offer myself, and Decker, as resources in this process and we’re happy to share our experiences and evangelize for the importance of increased strategic collaboration in our field.

What's next for Mobilize.org?

We’re planning our 10th Democracy 2.0 Summit in April, convening Millennials to work collaboratively to propose solutions to the most pressing issues that they’re facing. This round of Summits (called Target 2020: My Education. Our Future.) will be focused on the community college crisis that our country is facing; engaging students in North Carolina, New York, California, Michigan and Florida to take a leadership role in improving access and success for all our nation’s students. During each Summit, Millennials will award funding to the solutions that they believe will be most successful in increasing completion rates in their areas (up to $50,000 per Summit).

You can read more about our upcoming Summits and our Target 2020 work by visiting our website and to receive updates on our work, join the Mobilize.org network.

Two very different sites are helping people to volunteer in ways that are convenient and rewarding to them. Catchafire and Sparked both provide ways for individual social citizens to find volunteer opportunities online and for nonprofits to find people outside their networks who might be able to help. While the two share the same end goal, they have very different approaches - Catchafire sources concrete, meaningful projects that individuals can complete using their unique skills, while Sparked helps people use their downtime to help nonprofits with microvolunteering opportunities.

The Catchafire Way

Hoping to improve New York City’s low rate of volunteerism, Catchafire is a little like an online dating site for volunteers. Volunteers share information about their experience, skills and interests, and in return, the Catchafire team sends the volunteer a matching list of project options. The volunteer then writes a note to the nonprofit organization expressing interest in the project, and the nonprofit chooses from the interested volunteers. Volunteers can also browse projects and organizations to see what types of projects are available at any given time. The projects are about three months in length, are designed for one person, and must have a concrete deliverable like a logo design, budget design and development, or a press release.

The goal is to connect volunteers with projects that can be completed on flexible schedules and that also exercise and build the volunteer’s skills, which could be attractive to grad students and job-seekers in this economy. Catchafire also helps volunteers quantify their contribution by estimating how much the project would cost the organization. Between now and January 31, Catchafire aims to matched volunteers with more than $1 million in nonprofit projects. So far, Catchafire is only available in New York City, but be sure to check out their website.

If You’re Not Ready to Catchafire, How About a Little Spark

For a volunteering platform where physical location isn't important, see Sparked, by The Extraordinaries. Sparked is built on the idea that people want to volunteer, but they might not have a four-hour block on a Saturday. What they do have is downtime – waiting for a meeting that was pushed back 15 minutes, waiting to board a flight or waiting for their frozen pizza to cook. With Sparked, "waiters" become productive do-gooders and nonprofits get some much-needed help. After signing up, volunteers have personalized home pages that suggest current challenges that might suit their interests and skills, but they can also browse by the nonprofit, the cause or the skill needed. They can see how others have responded to the challenge and add their own answer to the thread. Sparked also allows small businesses and corporations to run their employee volunteer programs through the platform, by making it easy to track volunteer hours but still allowing employees to maintain different interests, skills, schedules and geographic locations.

Sparked asks nonprofits to post challenges that can be done entirely online, can be completed quickly and have a measurable result, and they can post five challenges at once. Some examples of volunteer tasks posted include suggestions on companies a nonprofit should approach for sponsorship, tips on how to effectively use social media for 30-minutes each day, document translation, web redesign and logo design.

It seems the requests with the most responses are ones that essentially employ Sparked as a type of "Yahoo questions" for nonprofits, rather than a volunteering site. If a friend at a nonprofit asked you a question about how to use social media for their nonprofit and you spent a few minutes making suggestions or pointing them to resources, would you consider that volunteering? Probably not. But on Sparked, it is. Is this an expanded definition of volunteering, or is it not quite what the Sparked team intended?

Nonprofits asking for help with a very specific product like translation or graphic design might receive more substantial contributions, but even then, respondents seem to be tempted to tell someone how to do something rather than doing it for them, which may be the price you pay for targeting these tasks at people with only short amounts of time to spare. For example, one nonprofit posted asking someone to design a dolphin graphic. So far, three people have responded, each sharing websites where the nonprofit can find existing dolphin graphics. It's not that these responses aren't helpful, it's just slightly different – well, less, frankly – than what was asked.

Getting Warmer

Managing volunteers to produce something of value to the organization as well as a meaningful experience for the volunteer is kind of the holy grail of nonprofit engagement. Both sites aim to work with individual volunteers’ interests and time constraints, but they are aimed at different people prepared for different levels of engagement and who have different definitions of what makes a meaningful volunteer experience. And both have some of the same types of projects listed, but as nonprofits grow accustomed to using these sites, I expect that will change. They might use Sparked for information, research and brainstorming - small tasks for lots of people with a little time – and Catchafire for more thoughtful, skilled projects, like web or logo design.

As with traditional volunteer management, the key seems to be knowing what tasks make sense for this forum and audience and crafting your request in a way that will receive the most helpful result. Both sites have put thought and effort into steering nonprofits toward posting well-defined, measurable and time-appropriate projects, and that's a great start. These platforms won’t solve a nonprofit’s volunteering woes entirely, but used thoughtfully, they could certainly help nonprofits find the right people for the right tasks by opening them up to different online communities.

Try out one or both of the sites, and let us know your experience!

If you’re not in the D.C. area you may have missed the launch yesterday of the local news site TBD.com. Or you may have seen it and wondered why the launch of yet another news site is relevant beyond people who really love D.C. news. TBD is noteworthy because it’s an innovative news option for those in DC and because we may see this model popping up in other communities, but also because it could be a blueprint for other online news sites, educational platforms and even nonprofits on how to better engage an online community.

Here are the highlights.
The CEO of the parent company, Allbritton Communications, described the new site’s goal best when he compared it to a supermarket. Instead of having to go to different blogs, social media platforms and news websites, he predicts that TBD will provide one-stop shopping for all the local news needs of D.C. area residents. TBD’s staff of 35 or so will both create original content and pull in local news stories from other sources – both partners and competitors. According to Mashable, the 129 (and growing) blog partners will receive a significant share in TBD’s ad revenue as well.

TBD is also making more of an effort than perhaps anyone before them to involve the community in its news. In addition to their content and that of their many partners, there will also be crowdsourced stories, discussion forums and social media streams to accompany them. Just as the stories will continue to evolve, so will the site. A “Complete the Story” tool will allow readers to add photos and details that are missing from the story. Their database of news from all over the region gives users access to the most current news in their area, so they can find out what’s important in their city by typing in their zip code and what’s important where they are standing right now by using one of TBD’s mobile applications.

Obviously TBD is a business. It’s funded by an already successful news company, which started Politico and already owns other local news outlets, and its only option in entering an already crowded market is to go gangbusters. While most nonprofits in an economic recession don’t share many of those circumstances, some of the strategies that make TBD unique among local news sources may be of help to nonprofits and cause advocates as well.

View your communications as the beginning of a conversation.
When you reach out to your support community by sending newsletters, writing blog posts, announcing changes to your services, releasing evaluations of your programs and even asking for money and volunteers, don’t just check that item off your to do list. Expect to begin a dialogue with the community about what you’re doing, allowing them to ask questions, show their support and provide feedback. Whether this is a conversation that takes place on your Facebook page, your blog or some lower tech venue, your supporters will appreciate being involved in the discussion rather than receiving just another email blast.

Look for win-win situations with potential partners.
TBD had a problem. If it was going to be the supermarket for all D.C. area news, it was going to need an overwhelming amount of current news content. Instead of pretending that its staff of reporters could cover all the subjects that the D.C. community cares about more quickly and thoroughly than the existing D.C. news sources as a whole, it formed a partnership with more than 120 of those sources. The resulting community network provides content for TBD and increased traffic, ad revenue, blogger training and other perks to the network. In the nonprofit world, Atlas Corps and six other organizations formed a creative coalition earlier this year that helped them win a collective $225,000 in the Pepsi Refresh Project. Are there competitors that you can turn into crucial partners by finding a creative win-win solution to an obstacle?

Be honest and upfront with the community you’re serving.
A letter from TBD’s editor Erik Wemple may indicate the philosophy of the new site, frankly acknowledging existing bugs and explaining why they launched the site when they did (some curious and resourceful people guessed the test site url). Maintaining credibility and a good brand is critical for continued success in the nonprofit world, but sweeping issues under the rug isn’t fruitful. Organizations that are transparent about mistakes, weaknesses or disappointments are often met with greater respect, trust and support, especially among Millennial communities.

What do you think of TBD? What can nonprofits learn from what it’s trying?

Summer can be a great time to slow down a bit and reflect on our work and what we’ve learned. Having now gotten my sea legs in the nonprofit sector, I’m struck by all the things I wish I’d known when I was first starting out. I asked friends from Twitter and beyond to help me make a list of advice for young change-makers, and these are the top seven things we've learned so far.

1. Find a mentor. If you don’t have a lot of experience, one of your best bets is borrow it. Mentors can provide invaluable advice – practical, ethical and theoretical. Whether you need to know how to deal with a sticky situation or just how to get some business cards printed, a mentor has been there before. As Adin Miller pointed out, you can’t force a mentor relationship, and sometimes you just don’t connect. But if you try a few different ones, you’ll connect with someone, learn a lot from their experiences and accomplishments and build a really valuable long-term relationship.

2. Challenge yourself and find your limits. Being digital natives, Millennials have lots of skills, but we’re not good at everything. Maya Enista shared a lesson she recently learned from KaBOOM! CEO Darell Hammond: spend 95 percent of your time on the 5 percent of things you’re NOT good at. If you’re always working on improving a few things at a time, you’ll be able to move those off the “to learn” list and tackle something new. Further, Kristen Cambell recommends spending time getting to know your limits as well as your strengths, so you can recognize your limit when you meet it, so you can regroup before charging forward again.

3. Don’t reinvent the wheel. I couldn’t agree more with Sokunthea Chhabra and Ayelet Baron on this piece of advice. While you might have a great idea for how to change the world, I promise there are other people who are already working on your cause or trying to implement a similar project – you just have to look for them. Build on and integrate what already exists and seek collaborators who make sense to avoid wasting your time and resources.

4. Don't wait. Regina Mahone shared a bit of wisdom from an interview with Idealist’s Ami Dar, who encourages young change-makers to take advantage of their youth and relatively low level of responsibility. If you have a great idea or a passion for a cause, take some risks and “go for it” before you have mortgages and mouths to feed.

5. Create your story, tell your story and leverage your story. David Smith’s advice is do at least one thing that will give you a story, which can demonstrate your passion and skills, and learn to tell that story really well. David says, “people invest in people, not ideas.” Once you’ve got your story and you’re telling it well, treat your reputation and social capital like an investment portfolio. When your personal stock is high, leverage that for partnerships, mergers and career moves, so that you, your organization and your cause take advantage of these high points when they come.

6. Connect with others. As Elizabeth Miller said, it’s important to connect with others who care about changing the world. I used to dread networking because I thought of it as standing around, making awkward small talk with someone just long enough to make it ok to ask them for what you really wanted (like help getting grant money or a job). But real networking is anything but fake. It happens naturally when you just start asking questions and getting to know people who are doing interesting things. It can happen at conferences, at happy hours, affinity group meetings or service projects. These relationships will not only lead to new opportunities, but will be your source of support, inspiration and feedback.

7. Goals and evaluation are your friends. It was a few years before I realized that if you haven’t set any goals, you can’t really know (or, more importantly in the nonprofit sector, show) what you’ve accomplished. Setting goals can be scary when you don’t know what to expect because no one wants to fall short, but they are crucial for building a successful track record. Evaluating your progress in measurable terms is equally critical for showing you how to tweak your strategy and use of resources to better meet your goals the next time around.

Do you have more advice to share with young change-makers and idealists?

A few weeks ago, I heard Sean Stannard-Stockton speak on a panel at Council on Foundations. He shared a short video by musician and CD Baby founder Derek Sivers, which discusses the leadership lessons than can be drawn from a lone shirtless dancing guy at a music festival.

I recommend watching the video (it's below and it's less than three minutes), but the two basic lessons Sivers shares are:

1. Good leaders will nurture their first followers (or first employees or first volunteers) and treat them as equals, so the movement, business or nonprofit is not resting on the one founder or ED's personality. It's truly about the movement.
    
2. The first follower is really the hero. Sure, maybe dancing around shirtless was a good idea - heck, a great idea. But without the first follower who gave his idea momentum and legitimacy, the leader probably would have looked like an loser after a few minutes and given up.

Sean said that his biggest critique of foundations is that they all want to be the shirtless dancing guy when what we actually need is more people who are willing to be the first follower. In other words, more foundations should be looking for organizations who are already doing great work and fund them. Similarly, one of my biggest critiques of my own generation is that we all want to be the shirtless dancing guy too. We all want to be the one with the new idea, the leader of the revolution, the one who makes decisions and, later, motivational speeches. But if we all insist on leading our own initiatives, there are going to be a lot of one-man movements out there.

It's not just that we CAN'T all be the shirtless dancing guy. It's also that we shouldn't. As Sivers says, "The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow." In the last few years a lot of great Millennial leaders have emerged in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors, but all of those leaders have had a first follower who saw a shirtless dancing guy and took on some level of risk to join and legitimize his efforts.

So to both the leaders and to those who encourage them, remember that the first follower is just as important to the success of a movement. Don't try to guard your idea and protect it from outside influence and people who might get a piece of your glory pie. Instead, welcome your first followers; let them dance with you. Millennials are particularly good at collaborating and being team players, but I think at times we still need to be reminded that while we are each special and capable of a lot, we need other people.

And being a first follower might be a more humble position, but it's not so bad. Both dancing guys benefited from making the movement work, and the crowd was better for it. Many of my peers want to start nonprofits or businesses, but they aren't sure what that nonprofit or business might be. Usually they are driven by the desires to change the world, make their mark, and do something different - desires that seem to be at the core of why many Millennials roll out of bed in the morning. But if you don't know what need you want to meet and how you'll meet it with your new nonprofit or business, you'll have a greater chance of being part of (and even influencing) a successful and meaningful movement if you just look for the best shirtless dancing guy you can find and be the first to join him.

Last week as Google unveiled its list of the world’s top 1,000 most-visited sites on the web, it was no surprise that Facebook topped that list. Even amid the privacy backlash the company has seen in recent weeks,  and the subsequent yet seemingly unsuccessful declaration of May 31 as “Quit Facebook Day” there’s something that keeps all of us -- 540 million unique visitors a month that is, or roughly 32 percent of the current online population -- coming back for more.

When looking through Google’s list, perhaps what could be seen as more of a surprise, (especially for those of us who live our lives at the intersection of technology and social change) is the fact that it takes quite a while to get to a site on the list that’s devoted exclusively to charity or social good. In fact, as Peter Panapento over at the Chronicle on Philanthropy pointed out it’s not until 854, that Causes.com appears as the first true “social good” site.  A special thank you to Peter for spending his lunch hour culling through the list to determine that one!

While this may not be encouraging news for nonprofits who are spending significant staff time and dollars perfecting their social media strategies, it does strengthen the case for meeting your donors, volunteers, or constituents where they are.  A case we’ve been trying to make for quite some time. But, before your boss gets too carried away asking how you’re going to position your organization to show up on Google’s next list it’s important to take a closer look at the sites who did make the cut, and how you can best leverage them.

Many of the top sites are resources that people use to find information about their friends, what’s happening in the news, or products they want to buy or sell - but most of those sites don’t produce all of their own content. Even better, they allow opportunities for nonprofits to give them content. As much as we aspire to, we might have to accept that most us with social good sites will never find ourselves on Google’s top 1,000 list.   Even so, it's up to each of us to make sure we take advantage of the opportunity to include information about our causes on some of the most visited sites on the web – be it Facebook, Wikipedia, blogspot or wordpress, flickr and youtube.  All nonprofits should take the necessary steps like perfecting  search engine optimization to make sure they are showing up on Yahoo, Microsoft, bing and other popular search engines.

With approximately 1.5 million nonprofit organizations in the United States alone - we already know that everyone is competing for the same pool of donors and volunteers, but now nonprofits are also competing for our clicks. So, how are you positioning your organization to emerge and stand out among them?

This week I went to a City Year Award Dinner honoring Richard Stengel, the managing editor of TIME, who helped to put service on the map by writing a TIME cover story in 2007 called "The Case for National Service." Although he received the Lifetime of Idealism award, he suggested that idealism alone will not change the world. He insisted that idealism should be paired with pragmatism.

In the case of TIME, this pairing is demonstrated in their now annual issue that focuses on volunteerism, philanthropy and service. It's a popular issue for consumers and advertisers, so while it's a "good" thing to do, it's also a prudent business decision for the magazine. TIME isn't exactly a social enterprise, but this is a good example of how traditional businesses can make decisions that are motivated by both purpose and profit, and how those decisions can benefit everyone. When organizations are both idealistic and pragmatic, businesses, consumers and society at large can all win.

Also this week, I came across a great blog post by Colleen Dilenschneider that features a talk by Dan Pink on motivation. Dan found that, contrary to popular belief, piles of money don't actually drive people to perform better. Once people are paid enough that they don't need to worry about the money, the three most important factors which motivate people to produce creative, quality work are autonomy, mastery and the opportunity to make a contribution. In fact, this study found that when people are offered the highest reward (like a bonus of two-months salary), they performed the worst. It makes sense that people want independence and to rise to the challenge of being really, really good at something, but I'd like to focus on the third factor - making a contribution - because it reminded me of Richard Stengel's remarks.

Research shows that people care about the impact they are having on the world, but people also want to make a living. Dan says that when the profit motive becomes detached from the purpose motive, bad things happen - if not ethically, the quality of products and services suffer. When companies function with purpose, they attract better employees, who are excited to come to work. As Millennial social citizens continue to flood the job market, they are looking for this combination of idealism and pragmatism, and they will be looking for it in a way that engages them regularly in a meaningful way - not just as an annual day of service.

The culture of really successful organizations, both for-profit and nonprofit, seem to have successfully combined a sense of pragmatism and idealism. Great business leaders don't rally their teams around the idea of making as much money as possible; they talk about a higher calling that will change the world in some way. And, in turn, great nonprofits are using revenue-generating models that lend greater independence and sustainability. In both sectors, the organizations that are having significant impact, and that have employees and constituents that are thrilled to be a part of what they're doing, are the ones that maintain a balance between pragmatism and idealism.

Not all ventures can be nonprofits, or even true social ventures, but I think a lot of companies can make more strategic decisions about how they will interweave profit motives and purpose motives - the way TIME, AOL, Apple, Zappos and a growing list of organizations have. How can more organizations hitch their profit and purpose motives and balance idealism and pragmatism in a way that benefits all?

Bagels in Clayton, Missouri, have never been so interesting. Headlines about the Panera that now allows each customer to "take what they need and leave their fair share" have been all over Twitter, Facebook and my Google Reader. It's definitely been a PR win so far, with people calling it "genius," "cool," "novel" and "awesome." And it's an interesting experiment to see if they can actually cover their costs, and even end up in the black by appealing to people's good nature - but I hardly think it's a good model for a nonprofit, and I'm not sure I understand the point.

The pay-what-you-can or pay-what-you-want model has been used by theater groups hoping to spread the word about a new play opening in a community and musicians trying to discourage piracy and fill concert seats, but it's not often adopted as a permanent business model. In 2007, Radiohead made a big splash by announcing its fans could set the price for their latest album "In Rainbows," and their gamble payed off, as they sold more albums and tickets than ever before - but even this successful foray into pay-what-you-want sales ended after a few months, when the band announced the download option would be shut down in favor of traditional outlets.

Any money raised, above what it takes to sustain the restaurant, could be used for community causes. They haven't determined what those causes might be, and unfortunately, I don't think they'll have to. If I took a field trip to Clayton right now, I would probably try to donate roughly the cost of my sandwich, give or take a dollar. If nothing else, social pressures would keep me from giving myself a big discount, but I wouldn't be motivated to donate a significant amount over the cost of my sandwich because, as I understand it, the money is either going to make up the margin being left by someone who doesn't pay their fair share (whether they are able to or not) or to an unknown cause. I just can't see that inspiring many people to give extra very often. So, if no money is raised for community causes, what's the gain?

In a New York Times article, Stephanie Strom points out that similar cafes in Ohio, Washington New York have either gone under or had to change their models due to the confusion, skepticism and less than altruistic attitude of some customers. But it can work. Salt Lake City's One World Everybody Eats, for example, has been operating since 2003, but the complexity of making the pay-what-you-want cafe work seems to require planning and strategy that I'm not sure Panera has put in so far.

Ron Shaich, who served as Panera's CEO until recently and still serves as its chairman, said it himself in the St. Louis Business Journal: "It's a real test of humanity," he says. "It's not a charity; it's a cafe of shared responsibility." I agree. While technically it is receiving tax benefits, it's not really a nonprofit. It's an experiment. And it's a marketing win. But is it something that's really going to make any difference in the Clayton community - or the other communities around the country that could find their own nonprofit Paneras popping up if this pilot store succeeds?

Don't get me wrong. I love bagels. Even more than bagels, I love bagels that taste like candy. But I have to wonder what the point of this "nonprofit" is, other than literally not making any profits. The nonprofit Panera is reporting that transactions (as I read that, it does not necessarily mean dollars) are up 20 percent over last week, when it was a for-profit restaurant. This isn't surprising given the media attention they've received this week. And I imagine that Panera's for-profit restaurants will also reap some brownie points and financial benefits from the publicity around this nonprofit venture, but is that enough?

What do you think? Will the nonprofit Panera last? And will it really benefit the community?