Highlights of Social Media for Nonprofits SF

Libby Leffler, strategic partner manager of Facebook, at Social Media 4 Nonprofits on Thursday (Photo by JD Lasica).

And a reboot for the Craigslist Foundation Boot Camps

It’s hard to come up with a highlight tape from Thursday’s Social Media 4 Nonprofits conference in San Francisco, given the breadth of talent on stage and in the packed room. The most notable news was the announcement that Darian Rodriguez Heyman, the former executive director of the Craigslist Foundation, and Ritu Sharma will be reviving the recently defunct Craigslist Foundation Boot Camp, with a renewed focus on the nonprofit community. Darian announced that they hope to have the initial Boot Camp in March 2013 at Microsoft’s offices in Mountain View, with a second event in San Francisco followed by one in New York in 2014. Great news!

I managed to squeeze in a few hours at the packed gathering at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis on Thursday, so here are some photos of the event, a pointer to the tweets during the day and a few nuggets that stood out for me.

What do your tweets say about you?

Some notable quotes from the event:

Dr. Mark Drapeau of Microsoft’s advice to nonprofits: “Create inspirational things your community wants to share.”

Mark on nonprofits’ Twitter accounts: “What do your last 20 tweets say about you?”

He cited Greenpeace Australia, CharityWater and the National Wildlife Federation as having good examples of the new Twitter headers. And he cited the UNICEF board on Pinterest showing off what a fictional girl in Sierra Leone really wants in her life.

Libby Leffler, strategic partner manager of Facebook, mentioned the great grassroots organizing campaign by Water.org at give.water.org and another campaign by Socialblood. It’s an interesting use of the Facebook platform, even if the Socialblood site overstates it a bit: “Our mission is to connect the entire Facebook population of over 900 million users to their blood types.”

Guillaume Decugi, CEO and co-founder of the curation tool Scoop.it — a great startup for whom I’ll be the guest for their Twitter chat this Thursday — invoked marketer Brian Solis in saying, “Brands must become media to earn relevance.” Last year at this same event I told the audience, “Your nonprofit is now a media publisher, so you need to start thinking like new media publishers by creating content.”

Other highlights of SM4NP SF

A few other highlights from the day:

Check out CancerCommons.org, “bringing science to the patient, and patient insights to science.”

Small is good! “Out of 1.5 million nonprofits in the United States, 75 percent have budgets under $75,000,” Darian told the room.

Ritu mentioned two hashtag services for those wanting to know what hashtags to use when tweeting about a cause or topic: Twubs and tagal.us (which is down at this writing).

She also noted that scheduling a status update should be done through Facebook, rather than a third party service, because Facebook penalizes outside services when it comes to getting your posts seen by your fans.

Lesley Mansford, CEO of Razoo: “A fundraiser with a video typically raises four times more than those without one.” She also said the best nonprofit campaigns are often 30 to 45 days long — even better if it’s a competition with different players pitted against each other.

The next Social Media 4 Nonprofits event is coming up Oct. 23 in Austin. Check out other coverage of this important series of educational events held across the country. (Disclaimer: Socialbrite is a media partner of SM4NP.)JD Lasica, founder and former editor of Socialbrite, is co-founder of Cruiseable. Contact JD or follow him on Twitter or Google Plus.