the groupery blog

A Network is not a Person

 

This may sound like belaboring the obvious.  Of course the network is not a person; yet how many of us have heard people say things like, "The community is passionate about XYZ," or "our network needs to be in closer communication," or "we can mobilize the network/community to overturn Proposition XYZ."

We speak of the network as if it had a single mind and a unified purpose; as if it were a single entity that could be steered and persuaded.  Perhaps this reductionism happens because, in truth, a network is highly complex and fluid and not at all easy to understand, much less maneuver.  It is easier to conceptualize and respond to a "one" rather than a "many."

The risk in doing so, however, is that one begins to absorb the language and to operate as if "network as person" were true.  How many emails have you received from organizations that want your support and money that you know are identical to the emails the organization sent to five thousand other people?  The organization assumes that if it is articulate enough, broad enough in its message, and offends no one in "the community," it will earn enough of the desired support.

This may be true.  But how much more effective could the organization be if it first understood that while the network or community has some properties (e.g. purpose, boundaries, members, etc.), it is an aggregate of individuals, each with her own unique order of interests and priorities, time availability, talent, and other sets of networks of which she is part.  One person may be swayed by personal interest stories, while another may hit the delete key immediately.  One person may be able to volunteer time right now, while another is booked solid for the next three months.  One person may have leadership abilities, while another prefers to be a good follower.

If the organization approaches this diverse, mutable, fluid, complex network with a one-size-fits-all approach, opportunities will be lost, and potential supporters will turn their attention elsewhere.  To work with a network, you have to pay attention to both the whole and the parts.  You need to be able to see overarching patterns, especially ones that relate to the health and vitality of the network,  while also keeping in close contact with individuals and understanding their preferences and challenges.

Non-Profits and Social Media - An Eruption in the Making

 

Alexandra Samuel, the CEO of Social Signal is onto something with her recent blog post.  

We too at the groupery are seeing great passion amongst volunteer leaders and non profits who today are primarily in synchronous client relationships hungry to take the social interactions into an asynchronous relationship.  They are interested in leveraging, reaching and extending their reach with social media.  They want to embrace these open technologies and often aren't sure where to start, who to have involved or scared that the task will require too much time and money.  It's unclear to many leaders what will really 'come off' the plate?  

Questions that arise are: Is it really secure?  How much time does it take to learn how to use it?  How will we ever be able to keep up with all the comments and feedback, etc.

We are talking with groups and leaders about shifting the conversation.  Spend time as teams to think through how to take an existing task off someone's plate to making space for social media.  Why not?   Consider making it as easy as this five step process:

Step One:  Talk in with volunteer teams about your where your customers live today in social media?

Step Two:  Discuss areas that are time intensive and involve communication, public relations, marketing and business development.

Step Three:  Converse around possible areas you would like to save time or resources from existing tasks or programs?

Step Four:  Consider taking small steps as group to practice internally "walk the talk" in a safe environment that builds everyone's confidence and experience. 

Step Five:  Launch one small social media program that allows you to be responsive to your customers, invite them into conversations and see the benefits of how adapting into this new environment can be fun, social and rewarding.

Hopefully in taking on these five easy steps, groups can see that social media does have its advantages and you can find the resources and time to commit.   We're particularly interested in the answers that NPO's and volunteer leaders arrive at for step one.  Do you believe you can reach and continue to engage your customers via Twitter and Facebook?  Or do your customers really live in eNewsletter land?  Do you have to pull them into conversations from their Inbox?  What's working for you?

Beth's Blog is another great resource for organizations at all stages of adopting social media.

Celebrate Make A Difference Day

 

To celebrate Make A Difference Day on October 24, the groupery will award 6 volunteer groups 4 hours (each) of Leader's Companion service for FREE.    Leader's Companion is one-on-one, hands-on support from an expert at the groupery specifically geared to support your efforts and help your group reach its goals.  Whether your group needs help recruiting volunteers for a particular event, getting members organized with an online directory, setting up effective group email lists, other?  the groupery's in-house experts are here to help!

How to enter to WIN your FREE support:
Simply go to http://bit.ly/PYHgd and let us know how your group would benefit by using the groupery.

Want to learn more?
Please join us on October 9 at 9:00 a.m. pst for a FREE webinar:
Organize your group for Annual Make a Difference Day
In this FREE webinar, you will see first hand what makes the groupery the choice for volunteer groups.  And how your group can make the most of Make a Difference Day.
Register today and please feel free to forward this link to other volunteers you know who might like to join us!  To register click here:  http://bit.ly/13qmM0

Feel free to visit our website @ www.thegroupery.com  to learn how hundreds of leaders from school groups, non-profits, clubs, scouting troops, and religious organizations are making the most of their volunteers' contributions with the groupery. 

Would you like to win a $25 Amazon gift card?

Say it in your own words and you could win a $25 Amazon gift card from the groupery!http://bit.ly/eZPU

Sound easy? That's because it is...
Simply add your ideas here on how a group could benefit by using the groupery and you'll be entered to win. Don't be shy, no answer is too short or too long -- the winner is randomly selected!

The winner will be randomly selected and sent the gift card by October 15th, 2009.

* Yes, every contest has fine print.
Must be a member of the groupery's leaders community (please go to www.thegroupery.com/leaders/@@newuser to join)
Must be over 18 years of age
Limit one entry per member
All replies may be shared by the groupery online or in print at any time

Your group emails can do SO much more!

Groups using the groupery already have so many advantages going for them, but our new email banners make group emails much more powerful.  Whenever anyone in your community sends a group email, your group's custom logo and news bulletins can automatically be added into the email.  Here's an example:

What this means for group leaders

Your group members will recognize your emails immediately and will be automatically reminded of your most important hot news, requests, or fundraising program reminders, such as your eScrip Online Mall link, or your upcoming fundraising auction needs.  You can even set effective and expiration dates so each bulletin can automatically start and expire.

The new email banner is in addition to our current world-class group email features enjoyed by our groups, including:

• Any member can send a group email from the comfort of their normal email program.
• All of the groups in your community have a group email address.
• Group emails can be moderated or not. 
• Your GoLocal sponsor billboards are automatically added into each email providing valuable visibility for your group's sponsors.

A great way to raise money for items not in your budget

Double Diamond Parent Leader, Lauren Klein is using the groupery’s product called GoLocal in an effort to get projects that weren’t in their Strategic PTO Budget now covered under a very easy to use online advertising tool with the groupery. 

Lauren found the groupery is easy to use to foster open communication and collaboration amongst school leaders, teachers and parents around community sponsors, events and fundraising.  She is using this tool for online advertising for her community members as fundraising tool and also a way that connects local business leaders with the Double Diamond Parents.  

The first sponsorship will pay for a new park bench for Double Diamond Elementary School as we recently got a new baseball diamond on campus.   Which is why I’m sharing my thoughts on the groupery blog – because I think this is a great way for sponsors to get daily payback and be a visible support of something ‘concrete’ on campus, like a bench.  In fact, we recently, had a parent request grass for our playground, which is currently all dirt that the children play on – so this new tool for our PTO will allow us to look at other campaigns, like for landscaping or other projects that weren’t in our formal budget.  I believe it can be a really positive relationship between our local business community and our school that leads to an interactive collaboration and longer standing relationship together.

The sponsorship for a community group is less than $2 per day, $50/month and offers varying contract lengths - from 6 or 12 month sponsorship.  It allows local businesses to receive valuable visibility 100’s times each day and raise awareness via profile page and promotions & coupons.

It was flexible and really easy to use!  I’m excited about the new potential for us in Nevada as we aren’t eligible for stimulus monies, so we need to work really hard in this economy to support our children.

The groupery has more information about GoLocal sponsorships here: http://www.thegroupery.com/golocal/golocal_for_sponsors.pdf

 

Inspirational Strategies for Parent Involvement and Leadership

Veteran expert Shana Moore shared her strategies on what you, the leader, can do before and during that first meeting of the year to harness the excitement and set the stage so members continue to come to subsequent meetings.

* Learn why it's more than just matching volunteers to your group's needs & tasks
* Learn why taking time to gather as a group, and building deeper, more committed connections matters
* Learn how to build a successful, committed parent community

Shana Moore shared with the groupery leaders and their community of over 400 volunteer group leaders her inspiration and presentation last week.  To learn more about the speaker click here!  Or you can go to her blog and download the slides she presented at:  http://bit.ly/15WkKi

 

Flyer Webinar fostered dialogue around communication

Today's webinar discussion around flyers allowed playgroups, mothers club and schools to discuss how they can communicate using technology.  One attendee shared that they are currently using Yahoo groups and are evaluating new web platforms that have more robust features, like flyer creation, archiving and storage. 

Another attendee was inspired to use the flyers to invite their local merchants to attend their upcoming carnival and use the platform to recognize their donors as well.

 

Upcoming webinar on July 29th if you missed today's:  Jump Start Session: Creating Flyers with sign-ups at noon PDT.  Click here to register for the webinar.

Group mailing lists - post without logging in!

One of the many benefits of using the groupery to get your groups started is that you can allow your members to post messages without logging in!    Your PTO, PTA, Charter Schools, Escuelas, or groups can send an email to a group email address which will be posted within the Groupery and sent out to all members.  It offers opportunities to be inclusive in your communications because it's more than a broadcast messaging tool, it allows members to post to the group.   

Back to School is a great time to kick off your new school year with web based platforms to communicate with your groups, subgroups and communities.  We invite you to sign up for a groupsite, test drive our groups, join our leaders community of practice and invite new possibilities at: bit.ly/JGsJR.

To learn more about our Leaders Community of Practice - learn more at:  http://bit.ly/h2yqf

Non English Speaking Populations - how do you attract them to PTO?

Our Leaders were discussing recently how to engage with non english speaking populations.  We had a vibrant dialogue around the topic and one of the main ways is to invite them into the conversations personally.  Whether that means going to flyers and communications in multiple languages, but also outreach to families to invite them into meetings.  Some members will also ensure that there is a translator involved with their PTO meetings in order to allow maximium participation.

One leader introduced herself in spanish so as to encourage inclusion and demonstrate that she wants to invite the Spanish speaking community to participate, present and be active in school functions and meetings.  She found that she had more volunteers sign up for the book fair through this gesture.

 

Parent Leaders: Get Organized Now for an Efficient Back-to-School

Last week, Lynne Steffens did our inaugural webcast, "How Parent Leaders can get members organized, 
take the Summer off, and hit the ground running this Fall"

She points out:

Typically summer is the time for families to disconnect from the rigors & rituals of the school year.  For the parent leader however, summer can be a time of working hard to prepare for the upcoming year.  Many leaders are hesitant to enlist the help of their Board and opt to go at it alone.  Far too often the result is “leader burn-out” before the school year has even begun. 
 

She presents a detailed plan of action to help leaders get prepared now so they can relax this summer and hit the ground running in the Fall.  Download How Parent Leaders can get members organized (.pdf).

Long Beach Area Mixer

Here's the flyer! Feel free to download the .pdf , too.

Next Week: MEC 2009 and CA Charter School Conference!

Next week the groupery will be at two conferences:

MEC 2009 short for "Microcomputers in Education Conference" -- in its 28th year! -- in Tempe, at ASU.  Topics range from gaming to podcasts, and I'll be presenting in Coor Hall Room L1-54 on how to improve parent volunteerism.

The California Charter School Conference will provide several opportunities for us to talk with people who are there, or even nearby in the LA area.  

We will be exhibiting, in booth 1129 (go in, make a left against the front wall, and then go up the first aisle near the food).

We're also presenting The Value of Smart Parent Involvement, co-presented by the Principal Wanny Hersey, of Bullis Charter School, a school that uses the groupery software!  That's in Regency C, in the Hyatt Regency Thursday 3/12 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM

And we've also scheduled a mixer Thursday 3/12, 5:30-7:30 at Smooth's Sports Grill, inviting those who are currently in the Los Angeles area but not necessarily at the conference to come join us.  We'll have with us Jamie Woolf, author of Mom-in-Chief, and a guest blogger here.  Details forthcoming.

7 Strategies to Ease Homework Struggles

Jamie Woolf has over twenty years of experience consulting to business leaders. Based on her work inside dozens of organizations, Jamie lays out her "best practices" to enjoy more success at home and at work. She founded The Parent Leader to help parents gain the self-awareness and leadership skills to transform their daily parenting challenges into desired results and co-founded Pinehurst Consulting, an organization development and training consulting firm. She is the author of Mom-in-Chief: How Wisdom From the Workplace Can Save Your Family From Chaos, blogs on http://mominchief.com and has a weekly feature on http://www.workingmother.com.

Jamie Woolf holds an M.S. in industrial/organizational psychology from San Francisco State University, and a B.A. in psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She lives in Oakland, California with her husband and two daughters.

Transforming Your Homework Hater: 

Tactics to Help Busy Parents Ease Homework Struggles

Dreading the homework hassles that greet you after an exhausting day at work? Wondering how to instill a work ethic in your child? Read about some “best practices” from the business world that will make the homework battles far less stressful and inspire a more motivated, responsible student. 

Every parent has been there. Your child comes in from school with a pile of homework and zero motivation to actually do it. He’s supposed to complete his assignments while you prepare dinner, but you always find yourself keeping one ear out for the TV being furtively switched on, or perhaps the zap of a video game bad guy biting the dust. Or, if he does have his book open, he’s zoned out in front of it or interrupting you every five minutes for help with a math problem you know he could solve with a modicum of thought.

But don’t throw up the white flag yet. You can still save your sanity and help your child develop a positive attitude about homework. Juggling work, school, and housework can be tricky, to say the least. But kids look to you as their leader, and your attitude and actions can make the difference between an apathetic student and an eager learner.

Here are a few suggestions on making homework time more productive and rewarding for everyone:

This Technological Life

(Today's guest blogger is Eric Grant, from KnowledgeWorks Foundation.  He's a consulting futurist, technologist, and educator.)

We marvel at what mobile phones can do as we can hold in our our hands more computing power than what used to fill a warehouse. We connect as never before via social networks. We search for information and can find it instantly. We can do so much that was impossible 20 years ago, and we can't remember how we functioned without the latest technologies.

Yet, most organizations are slow to adopt new technologies - either they don't know which tools they can use, or they fear that the tools will be difficult to use. But there's one very compelling reason we should do so - we owe it to the next generation of children coming into the world.

They're not going to care about the ancient technologies of their parents, teachers, and other old people. They will grow up connected to each other. They will simultaneously consume and create information at all times. They will make no distinction between offline and online, between virtual and physical, because all of that will seamlessly function as part of the platform. The new technologies they will play with are ones we can barely imagine now!

We have two essential duties to this next generation:

• understand the evolving landscape as much as we can so that we can support and guide and protect our children.  This is easily accomplished by trying new technologies, involving ourselves and our children in their design and use, and evaluating their potential.
• get out of the way if we can't navigate the landscape ourselves, so we don't hold our children back.  Worrying about safety and exposure are products of fear of change, and they are usually easily dealt with once confronted.

With the Obama administration emphasizing education and making a push for educational technologies, the time has never been better for organizations to step into present so they can be better prepared for the future.

TheGroupery is one example of technology that brings stakeholders together using new methods. It increases transparency, connects stakeholders in education, and could be a major component of the future platform. For more examples, check out the Map of Future Forces Affecting Education.

Teens Develop Skills When Online

A extensive Digital Youth Research 3-year study funded by The MacArthur Foundation explains that teens learn important new social and technical skills that are relevant type of literacy today.  It also recommends that adults and educational institutions take an active role in participating with teens online.

According to researchers, young people are motivated to learn from their peers, as well as adults, online. The Internet provides new kinds of public spaces for youth to interact and receive feedback from one another. This may be different from how students are often asked to learn in schools.

In a cautionary note to parents, the study indicates that most youth are not taking full advantage of the learning opportunities of the Internet. While most youth use the Internet socially, they may overlook learning opportunities. Serious learning opportunities are abundant online in such subjects as astronomy, history, creative writing, and foreign languages. Youth can connect with people in different locations and of different ages who share their interests, making it possible follow pursuits that might not be popular or valued with their local peer groups.

Teens need guidance in where they can be private and where they are public online. Profiles are public; conversations are often private (unless they're conducted publicly, or there's some reason to search them).

Help your children achieve literacy in this new medium!  If you have specific questions, post them here; or begin a new topic on the groupery's facebook page.

Mumbai, Schools, and Disaster Communication

Amidst the unfolding horror of the attack in Mumbai today, I want to take a moment to point out how Twitter is being used to keep people informed during an emergency.

Twitter is an asynchronous chat. "Asynchronous" means that, like email lists, people talk to each other but not at the same time, and "chat" in this case means that a group can communicate by text message from any cell phone, or by using a web interface.  Messages are limited to 140 characters -- not very long at all.

So imagine people are now able to send text messages to the world at large during an emergency. What might they say or do?

Today, in the case of the attack in Mumbai, I found someone through a friend, who was providing extensive coverage by rebroadcasting -- called "retweeting" or "RT" for short -- news and notable information as she unearthed it.

So the following are three consecutive "tweets" (what one calls a text message on twitter) from @asteris, a user at Twitter (http://twitter.com/asteris).

RT @mumbaiattack: #mumbai Terrorist organization now has access to all police and rescue attempt information via hijacked police vehicle
http://tinyurl.com/5cm9sf MumbaiHelp blog focuses on attacks
http://www.nowpublic.com/ta... NowPublic is scanning Twitter for multiple term references to the Mumbai attacks

There are several things going on in the first "tweet."

First, someone has set up an account called mumbaiattack. If I were a user, I would click on the link mumbaiattack, and choose to "follow" that person, and if I allow their tweets to go to my cell phone, I would be able to get updates there. Note that the @ symbol is used to denote a user.  So we say @asteris is referring to what @mumbaiattack had originally said.  

The "hash tag" #mumbai is used by anyone who is commenting on the subject, whether or not they will say the word mumbai in their post. For example you could tweet:  "The Taj Mahal is in flames, there are hostages inside #mumbai" and anyone who wants to search on the topic in the broadest sense can search on the term #mumbai.

So if you were going to make sense of that first tweet from Asteris, it would read like this: "I am retweeting the user mumbaiattack, who said 'Terrorist organization now has access to all police and rescue attempt information via hijacked police vehicle.' This is related to the search term #mumbai."

The second tweet is a blog set up specifically to help this instance.  You can see that it has limitations - how do you find what you might be looking for in the comments?  It has the advantage that all the messages are visibly in one place. It has the disadvantage that it's tough to sort through the messages.

The third tweet is announcing a website that is measuring the volume of news. It's a very interesting site.

Another alternative for those who want to look for things themselves is to go to http://search.twitter.com and enter the term "#mumbai" (or "mumbai") into the search box.

In my next post, I'll write up how to use this technique in a school, pta and community context.

How to Engage Parents?

Even powerful technology like the groupery isn't likely to cause parents who have been distant from their children's schools to suddenly develop a spirit of volunteerism.

But what is?

This is a very difficult question, because there are so many issues that cause parents to volunteer, and conversely to make them reticent.  There are also reasons why communities might not welcome all volunteers without the ability to provide oversight and guidance.  So I've begun a Facebook thread on this topic.

To get things started off, I've included a link to the National Center for School Engagement, which has a paper (.pdf) that, in a nutshell, points to providing services to parents as a first step to getting more parents involved in the educational volunteerism process.  What those services are would depend on the parents, but might include access to dental care, social events geared towards parents, or information the parents are seeking -- whether or not it's about education.

And the resources might already be within the school: for example, in High Schools with significant first-generation populations, some students dread interpreting between English and their parents' native language, but are more willing to do that for service learning credit for a non-parent.

So I urge those of you on Facebook to share your experiences about improving parental engagement in the forum there, or of course you're welcome to post them here if you'd prefer, or if you would like them to be anonymous feel free to contact me directly at jessica@thegroupery.com.

Arizona Charter School Conference

We're excited to be at the Arizona Charter School conference.  We're in Booth 24 and will be giving away an iPod during the raffle. Be sure to drop by!

Friday is deadline for 2009 PTA "Take Your Family to School" Grant

The National PTA is sponsoring "Take Your Family to School" week in February, 2009. It offers grants of up to $1897 to schools to enable them to have special programs and/or reach more families in the community.

The grant application is due at 5pm Central Standard Time, on Friday, November 7.