Beth Kanter

Daniel Lee is a 2012 Social Citizens Ambassador and the executive director of the Levis Strauss Foundation. Through the Foundation’s “Pioneers in Justice” initiative, Daniel is leading an innovative approach that helps advocacy organizations tackle the “social media for social change” zeitgeist head-on. In this article, he shares the Pioneers’ framework around social media strategies designed to drive engagement and action among young and diverse audiences.

Time Magazine provocatively named “The Protester” as its 2011 “Person of the Year” for its riveting influence on last year’s social and political events. As courageous citizens connected with each other to express dissent and organize public actions, social media tools spurred activism and social change in unprecedented ways.           

Chalk up my vote for 2011’s “Best Debut Artist” and “Best Supporting Actor.” 

But for legal and advocacy organizations that defend civil liberties in the United States, forays into the social marketplace come with a unique set of challenges – and, no doubt, risks: 

• In the decentralized (indeed, some might say cacophonous) field of social media, engaging in two-way conversations means surrendering “message control” and the traditional calculus of “message discipline.
• In this sound bite culture, social justice organizations must carve out nuanced positions on complex social issues, from racial and gender equity to immigration reform. What this often means is that their messages might not garner the media attention or viral traction they deserve.
• While emotive storytelling is crux to engaging the hearts and minds of social media consumers, advocates are ethically bound to preserve the privacy of vulnerable clients. 
• Finally, substantiating impact and success to risk-averse board members may be vexing.                                     

The Levi Strauss Foundation launched the “Pioneers in Justice” initiative to tackle the “social media for social change” zeitgeist head-on. Through this initiative, we are supporting a group of dynamic, next-generation leaders in the social justice field in the San Francisco Bay Area as they retool their organizations for greater impact. The Bay Area, after all, is renowned as a cradle of innovation – both for technology and social movements.

“Pioneers in Justice” operates as a forum to explore social media tools that may power their local advocacy work and explore “networked” ways of collaboration within the social justice sector – and equally important, a space to address any concerns that may surface along the way. The Pioneers’ approach is flexible yet focused:  

• We encourage these organizations to take sensible, measured steps to integrate social media into their organizational and social change trajectories.  As Beth Kanter invokes:  Crawl, Walk, Run and Fly.
• We also aim to help them measure incremental progress against their goals of engaging younger and more diverse constituencies, driving successful campaigns, and building a moral and political consensus around their change agendas.

MiACLU is a one-of-a-kind project born from this framework.

MiACLU.org is an online, Spanish-language platform created by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, an organization well-known for its spirited defense of civil liberties (advocating free speech, marriage equality and immigrants’ rights, among other issues). As rapid demographic shifts powerfully reshape the cultural and political landscape of California, they also give rise to anxieties that may render immigrants vulnerable.  Latinos, who comprise the bulk of California’s immigrant population, tend to be younger and less affluent than the state population as a whole. 

Against this backdrop, the ACLU-NC is seeking a crucial opportunity to grow its impact. This year, MiACLU seeks to engage 10,000 monolingual and bilingual Spanish-speaking Californians. MiACLU is a new entry point – amplified by ethnic media and personalized through community outreach—to engage this population on the key issues that affect them.

MiACLU isn’t just a cookie-cutter to an English website—it’s an independent portal for original content in Spanish, with its unique set of tools. Facebook, Twitter and text messaging are also in the pipeline. It’s the first web-based space to promote the understanding and protection of constitutional rightsamong Spanish speakers by the ACLU affiliates in California. Check out this manual with vital nuggets of information about knowing your rights in the wake of natural disasters, or this article explaining how immigrants who are victims of crime may apply for a U.S. visa.

In time, it may become a platform for immigrant communities to help ACLU-NC drive momentous legal and policy victories. For example, ACLU-NC is working to keep local police and sheriffs out of immigration enforcement; Latinos account for 40% of all Californians and many experience racial profiling that is exacerbated when local law enforcement gets pulled into immigration enforcement.

So, that’s the spirit of “Pioneers in Justice”:  taking leaps of faith (big and small) with social media to drive engagement and action among new and unexpected audiences.  Can justice roll down like waters, propelled by viral? 

As social media maven Beth Kanter celebrates her 53rd Birthday today, she does so in true Kanter style, using the tools and techniques that she blogs about each and everyday to teach, inspire and raise money for the Sharing Foundation which will help send 53 more Cambodian children to school. 

Be A Generous Geek: Mashable Summer of Social Good

Happy Birthday Beth from all your friends at the Case Foundation!

Coming off the heels of the National Conference on Volunteering and Service, I’m reminded about the power of individuals to recognize their potential not only as volunteers but also as philanthropists. It’s kind of serendipitous timing that just last night NBC aired its first episode of a new series, The Philanthropist. 

The GiveList was launched yesterday as a resource for supporting causes in a year when many of us won't have the means to write a check (although if you do have the means, please do so!).

The site is a really simple way to aggregate great, creative ideas for supporting causes. Just use the tag #givelist on Twitter or de.licio.ous for ideas on ways to give and support communities and causes, and they'll pop up on the site. Or you can post a comment on the site of a great idea that you have.

The most creative ways of supporting causes without having to spend, buy, or donate any money  (as determined by, well, me!) will be listed under the favorites category. So, start thinking and pinging and tagging!

The idea for the GiveList began to crystallize when we started to think about reviewing last year's Guide to Good Giving for this holiday season's giving. But, sadly for the world, this year feels very different from last year. We began to think about providing more alternatives for people to support causes in a really tough economy.

In partnership with my friend, Marnie Webb, the co-CEO of TechSoup Global (really, global!), we did what good social citizens do -- we put up a Wordpress blog overnight, started to populate it with the tag "givelist," and away we went.

As I posted on the site last night - wow, what an immediate response!  Here's more from that post:

In the few hours that GiveList has been up and running, we are delighted and thrilled with the enthusiasm and excitement with which our idea has been received.  Thanks to Beth Kanter for so creatively adding GiveList to an upcoming presentation in Boston, and Lucy Bernholz for posting about it so quickly.  Thanks to the tens of tweeters using the #givelist hashtag and sharing ideas and helping to spread the word.  Here’s my favorite tweet of the day from Missashe, “swoon #givelist (Hat tip, everyone I follow on twitter…) love, love, love this idea!”

So, thanks again for giving our idea oxygen and love, as someone said to us this afternoon, “Just because I’m poor doesn’t mean that I have to be stingy!”

I'll provide updates here on the great ideas we're receiving, but, please help spread the word and put on your thinking cap 'cause it's going to take a lot of creativity and elbow grease to help our causes and communities through the winter.

Photo by wharman

Blogs.com published its top ten nonprofit blogs last night -- and wahooo, Social Citizens is listed! We are very grateful to our friend, Beth Kanter, for including us on this list of outstanding blogs.

Here's the entire article: Top 10 Nonprofit Technology (NPTech) and Social Media for Social Change Blogs. Let us know what you think of the company we keep!

In true Beth Kanter style, she has gone above and beyond to provide us with a terrifically robust roundup of the “who’s who” of Gen Y and twenty-something bloggers. I’m excited to say we’ve featured many of these great voices here on Social Citizens, but some are brand new to me — and have quickly made their way as new additions to my RSS feed.

We appreciate the nod to Social Citizens and are glad to be recognized as one among the growing voice of Millennial bloggers. As we see more and more people talking about and writing about Gen Y (admittedly sometimes ad nauseam), this list renews my hope and confidence in our generation to share their own thoughts and ideas about how we’re changing the social change sector.

Here are a few blogs that have recently found themselves in my rotation … what’s in yours?

Gen Y Give: As a millennial, Miriam Kagan believes in the power of young people to “give” and talks about the motivations and trends related to her generation and philanthropy.

Mobilizing Youth: Ben Rigby of MobileVoter incidentally also wrote the book Mobilizing Generation 2.0: A Practical Guide to Using Technology to Recruit, Organize and Engage Youth, a book with lots of answers for those of you who are just looking to break into this.

The Brazen Careerist: This site based on Penelope Trunk’s blog always seems to have some timely and relevant blogs, probably because of its self-proclaimed network of “vibrant, curious and ambitious career-minded bloggers.”

Amy Sample Ward: She provides some enlightening thoughts on the intersection between the social change sector and technology.