On Monday, I had the opportunity to attend Social Media for Nonprofits, the last in a series of nation-wide conferences providing nonprofit leaders with tools, resources, inspiration and tips to create, manage and maximize their media presence.

With the institute’s rebranding efforts, and a sea of updating and maintenance in terms of transitioning our social presence: website, blog, and social networking sites, this was a perfect opportunity to discover new tools.

The latest statistics presented an ever-growing shift toward enhanced social engagement: if Facebook were a country, it would be the 3rd largest in the world…50% of Fortune 100 brands already subscribed to Google plus…70% of brand content is created by consumers…90% of people trust recommendations from others and a recent study showed that 47% of people were okay with donation-solicitation through social media.

This will be a three-day blog series of Resources from Social Media for Nonprofits. Today, we will list a few RULES for sharing and storytelling on social media. 

 As presented by Anna Doherty, marketing manager, engagement and social media for DonorsChoose:  

Six Rules for sharing on social media:

1. Join the conversation around your cause

2. Share content and collateral that’s unique to your organization

3. Celebrate big news

4. Share staff culture

    5. Think big picture

    6. Frequency should be driven by quality

 As presented by by Paull Young, Director of Digital Engagement, charity:water:

Five RULES for storytelling on social media:

1. Go route of positivity

2. Don’t ask for money, tell stories

3. Do it wrong quickly

4. Be personal

5. Help others see the impact

In future blog posts, we will talk about online resources for nonprofits, and highlight examples of successful online campaigns using social media.

“When I started Idealist.org in 1995 I wish I could have had this amazing group of people whispering in my ear, and stopping me from making some of the bigger mistakes I’ve made over the years,” says Ami Dar, founder and executive director of Idealist.org/Action without Borders, in the foreword of Nonprofit Management 101. 

Edited by Darian Rodriguez, whom I just had the pleasure of meeting at the Social Media for Nonprofits event in NYC, (which he produced with his soon-to-be wife Ritu Sharma) is as informative in speech as he is in print—he is an eloquent and comprehensive distiller of leadership information, inspiration and wisdom. (More to come on the blog regarding ideas and benefits from the conference.)

Nonprofit Management 101 is one of those books—like The Chicago Manual of Style or Letitia Baldrige’s  Complete Guide to Executive Manners—that become a “desktop go-to.” It is a resource to turn to for problem-solving, guidance or precedents and examples of topics ranging from The Importance of Diversity and Cause Related Marketing to Board Fundraising and Web Design.

Contributors including Paul Hawken, Lynne Twist, Ami Dar, Beth Kanter, Kay Sprinkel Grace, and 45 other experts share their wisdom in chapters that detail case studies, dos and don’ts and resource reviews including websites, support organizations, blogs, reports and FAQs.

What are your “go-to” desktop resources?

Recently, I met Kanika Gupta, who told me: “I am passionate about social entrepreneurship because I am a social entrepreneur.” According the Stanford Social Innovation Review, “Growing numbers of young people are making an about face—turning their backs on working for “the man” and creating their own ventures.

Firsthand, Kanika has been through the struggles of launching multiple social ventures, and she knows how daunting and difficult it can be. While in her second year of building Nukoko, a Canadian nonprofit which sends over 600 girls to school in west Africa annually, she became frustrated by the lack of resources at her disposal. So she reached out to 50 social entrepreneurs for guidance. All lamented the lack of practical, resource-based support they found when starting their ventures. In hearing their experiences echo her own, the need for a comprehensive resource became immediately apparent, the potential to build it immediately inspiring. Kanika decided she would dedicate herself to encouraging and supporting young people who may be afraid to launch their own social venture.

Read our PROFILE in Innovation on the interactive online resource SoJo. 

"When we look at the world through the lens of HOW, we see leaders shift, and others even transform, their habits of leadership from "command and control" to "connect and collaborate." It's a move from exerting power over people to generating waves through them."

One focus of Dov Seidman’s new book, How: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything, acknowledges the strong and immediate impact of social media on our business culture. People now have instantaneous access to the innermost workings regarding organizational conduct. In addition to all the elements of possible exposure, competition in the market has become quick to easily reproduce better, faster, and lower priced products and services.  Customers are quick to compare qualities, features, and price points; making it increasingly difficult to be distinguished.

Mr. Seidman distills a major factor; a spectrum of variation known as the “how.” He defines this as “the realm of human behavior—how we do what we do.”  The “how” provides the critical element of differentiation where organizations can “outbehave the competition and create enduring value.”

Through case studies, research, anecdotes and interviews, each chapter brings the reader closer to understanding the importance of creating more self-awareness among an organization’s culture. In particular, he focuses on “the ways of conducting ourselves in an internet worked world: transparency, trust, and reputation,” and why these aspects are essential to achieving global success.

"Stakeholders want to know HOW our organization behaves in all of its relationships, HOW our company creates the products and services they deliver, HOW profits can be generated in a sustainable manner and HOW we as  leaders intend to ensure that our company will thrive in a resilient way despite historically high economic volatility." 

The Girl Scouts of the USA National Young Women of Distinction recipients are recognized as some of the most remarkable emerging leaders in the nation.

Drawn from a pool of hundreds of Gold Award recipients—an honor as old as the Girl Scouts organization itself and a Girl Scout’s culminating experience in the form of a social service project—10 remarkable young women, ages 14-17, are recognized each year for their commitment to service and leadership as Young Women of Distinction. 

Individual projects have ranged from implementing state-level congressional legislation to increase safety on a particularly dangerous road, to the innovative Pallets-A-Plenty, which fashions waterproof, environmentally-friendly sleeping pallets for the homeless.

These young women are innate leaders and have already changed the world as high school students.

Learn about Girl Scouts in ACTION.

If you missed the annual Bachmann Book Series last month, you’ll have more chances to see it as HEC-TV begins airing the series at 8 p.m. Wednesdays beginning Dec. 7.

The 2011 Bachmann Book Series featured Frances Hesselbein, author of “My Life in Leadership: The Journey and Lessons Learned Along the Way,” and Becky James-Hatter, president and chief executive officer of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri, discussing their experience in leadership. John Bachmann, a senior partner at Edward Jones, led the discussion, which took place on Nov. 8 in the Century Rooms at the Millennium Student Center at the University of Missouri–St. Louis.

From The Huffington Post, The Genie Is Out of the Bottle, by Michele Hunt | December 2, 2011

Excerpt: 

As we look around our world we see a plethora of outcries, protest and revolutions demanding change. On the surface they seem to be very different groups with different agendas, from vastly different cultures, different races and even different generations. The remarkable thing however, is that this phenomena is happening almost everywhere, in the same timeframe and at a volume unlike anything we have seen in the history of humankind. This should cause us to ask some very important, fundamental questions:

• On a deep level, could there be some common yearnings in people that connect all of these cries for change?

• Why now and why everywhere; is there a common cause beyond the obvious economic and political conditions?

• Could there be a shared vision of life's possibilities and potential growing in the hearts and minds of people around the world?

Read Full Article

"It is jarring to go public for the first time about my own experiences: The looks, the snide comments—particularly from the adults, who are supposed to know better—make me flush with shame and cry at night."

Rachel Lloyd's story is powerfully gripping, as told in her recent memoir, Girls Like Us. Strikingly real because the author herself successfully escaped the lifestyle she now fights to end, Girls Like Us is the true story of how Rachel Lloyd left her life as a sex-industry victim, established GEMS (Girls Educational and Mentoring Services) in 1997, and took it from a two-woman operation to what is now one of the most innovative and groundbreaking nonprofits in the United States, helping more than 300 girls a year in the New York City area.

Lloyd is able to present the harsh reality of an unthinkable business in the United States: the sexual exploitation of women and young girls. In a tone both poignant and clinical, Lloyd recounts her personal history, growing up in Europe and emigrating to the United States. Interwoven in the painful details of her own life, Lloyd introduces girls like Aisha, Jennifer and Miranda, victims of abuse, homelessness, neglect and, ultimately, sex trafficking—all of whom are United States citizens. Paralleling her own story, Lloyd depicts the girls’ initial defensiveness, writing that “the girls are surprised, and then relieved, when they realize I won’t judge them.”

Lloyd explains that “according to a 2001 University of Pennsylvania study, an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 adolescents are at risk for commercial sexual exploitation in the United States each year,” yet the common perception is that these girls choose to work as prostitutes and therefore don’t often receive the attention or help they deserve. Lloyd dispels this misconception almost immediately, recounting a late-night meeting with a tough, jaded, experienced eleven-year-old sex trade victim.

Although Lloyd’s story is heartbreaking, eye-opening and at times painful to read, her ultimate success founding and growing GEMS allows the reader a sense of victory over a cruel reality. Lloyd’s own maturation throughout the book is mingled with small victories, stories of girls she has helped and the lives they have been able to establish after escaping the sex trafficking world.

Girls Like Us offers a raw, honest and detailed account of a reality that many Americans could never understand. Lloyd’s work with GEMS is shown as a critical necessity in the United States while the industry’s many victims are proven resilient, powerful and full of potential.

What is your defining moment? Share your story with us.

“When I returned to Argentina, my main mission was to lose myself in its culture. I got used to wearing the national shoe: the alpargata, a soft, casual canvas shoe worn by almost everyone in the country.

Toward the end of my trip, I met an American woman in a café who was volunteering with a small group of people on a shoe drive – a new concept to me. She explained that many kids lacked shoes, even in relatively well-developed countries like Argentina, an absence that didn’t just complicate every aspect of their lives but also exposed them to a wide range of diseases. Yes, I knew in the back of my mind that poor children around the world often went barefoot, but now, for the first time, I saw the real effects of being shoeless: the blisters, the sores, the infections – all the result of the children not being able to protect their young feet from the ground.

I wanted to do something, but what?”

This is one of Blake Mycoskie’s most defining moments as a leader, as told in Start Something That Matters, the story behind the popular, socially-conscious company, TOMS Shoes. Mycoskie founded the for-profit company with an innovative twist: for every pair of shoes that TOMS sells, a pair of shoes is given to a child in need.

Leader to Leader Institute would like to invite you to submit a reflection on your own defining moment – the moment that you started on the path to becoming the leader you are today. Your defining moment can be anything; every leader’s journey is unique. With your submission, you will be entered to win a copy of TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie’s book Start Something That Matters. Both written and video responses are encouraged, so feel free to be creative in sharing!

To enter the giveaway, post your defining moment on our blog or facebook by December 2, 2011.

What a great video documenting Frances Hesselbein's journey in leadership. From where she began to where she is now, can you believe everything she has accomplished? Check out Frances' interactions with Ford CEO Alan Mulally, author Jim Collins, West Point staff and cadets, and so many others. In what ways do her philosophies and achievements speak to you?

To serve is to live.