Picking up where my colleague Chris Wolz left off yesterday, I'm live blogging a session at a small event in DC. Today we are at the recently-opened Newseum -- an impressive building near the U.S. Capitol.

This session is titled " Networking: Using the Web to Connect with Your Stakeholders in Fundraising and In-Kind Support."

First up, Michael Silverman, partner at Echo Ditto and former Dean Campaign staffer:

It's difficult for organizations to insert themselves into these spaces that are primarily conversational. What's most exciting is social networks ability to drive offline, real-world action.

The Dean campaign was the first time this was seen using Meetup.com, a site started to bring together fans of "Lord of the Rings" fans. Today its for people like moms and dog owners looking to find each other. It enables people to gather together along interests in which there is no other group that would bring them together.

Recent example: Bill Mckibben used social networks to organize climate change activists and hold 1,000 rallies within 12 weeks to pressure Congress. And this is not new organizing, but it's just accelerated due to power of networks.

Now, we're hearing from Randall Winston, Director of Nonprofit Relations, Facebook Causes

Facebook is a real social network of "real people doing real things." Winston draws distinction with MySpace where you can create fictional profiles such as Bobba Fett" if you want.

Causes grew out of the original Facebook groups that were joining together to organize for Darfur disinvestment. These were the largest groups on Facebook. But they started to wither because you couldn't do anything in a group.

Causes founding premise was to allow people to continue to organize on their own.

Currently, there are 12 million users 80,000 causes benefiting 20,000 nonprofits in U.S. and Canada. The vast majority of Causes founders are young people who do not work for the nonprofit.

While nonprofits can go in and manage causes, but it's still meant to be for users.

Example: UNICEF. UNICEF wasn't interested in social networking until a 14-year-old girl organized over 10,000 people in a Cause without UNICEF's knowledge. UNICEF noticed when one day they received a $10,000 check in the mail. Then they became quite interested.

They wondered how to engage people. The best way to engage this community is to start at the lowest common denominator and reach critical mass before rolling out new ways to engage.

Main criticism has been in regard to fundraising. Winston says we don't know exactly how to measure success, but here are a few results:

1) Build awareness (of your organization since your organization is on people's profiles)
2) Build Community: overtime this grows
3) Education: Causes include tools for posting media, announcements, and email. There are also wall postings and lists of top supporters.

Next: Eliza Byard, Executive Director, GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network.)

Eliza said that she had to be dragged kicking and screaming into technology. Then, in 2001, she read (and highly recommends) More Than Bit Players.

Article points out that reaching a network is not the same thing as reaching an audience. In Web. 1.0 your only option was to yell louder. Now, with social networks, you can get people to pass along info. But this is labor-intensive. But how to engage people and build community with Web 2.0 communities.

GLSEN's case study: A young man named Larry King was shot in the back of the head by another 8th
Grader simply because he was gay. This is the organization's worst nightmare. (Four out of five gay students experience verbal and physical harassment at school on a regular basis.) This was two days before a much more visible campus shooting. This took this story out of the public's attention.

With foundation support, they launched a place for people to post vigils, and also entered social networks including a Facebook Cause, a MySpace, YouTube, etc. But the question becaume -- how do we capture this community's outrage into something sustainable.

Fortunately, GLSEN had an event coming up -- their "Day of Silence." So they were able to lay out a number of next steps for supporters related to participation in this event. They also realized that they would have to produce content just for social networks. They produced an inexpensive video for YouTube. They also were lucky to have the talk show host Larry King (the victim's namesake) record a free PSA for them.

GLSEN's results: 88% increase in annual Day of Silence and 50% increase in number of schools that held Day of Silence activities. Audience for banner ads was 14- to 17-year-olds, and click-thru rate on MySpace was double of that of MySpace.

Question & Answer:
Winston: Facebook's average age is still in mid-30s with 200,000 new users a day. Facebook makes it easier to find things via your friends. Facebook is a place of networks, MySpace is more of a mass medium.

Byard: don't forget that one of the advantages of YouTube is that the hosting costs for video have now gone away. You just need to create it.

Silverman: Think about a way to enable people to create their own media that is compelling to their networks. Such as NothingButNets.org who enable people to do their own fundraising. It scales well because everyone in the network. Another example: Witness.org lets people upload videos that show human rights abuses.

Byard: Don't underestimate the staff required to do this well. You need to substantially re-order your organization's resources. This changes how your organization does business."

Silverman: The personal news stream is often more interesting than the faceless organization itself. So people at nonprofits should create these streams.

My Takeaways:

• The Newseum is a nice conference space with good food and reliable wi-fi for attendees.


• Social networks are still primarily for prospecting, but let you do it in a targeted way.


• You need to produce content that is social network-ready. Blog posts, short videos, etc.


• Your social networking efforts will be most successful if you tie it together with real off-line events.


• Web 2.0 can substantially change your organization's structure -- for the bettter -- as the implications for community organizing are substantial.