Technology for Social Good Archive

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Happy 5th Birthday charity: water!

September 19th, 2011, by Sloane Berrent. No Comments »

It has been such a tremendous journey to watch charity: water evolve, grow and change lives over the past 5 years. Five years ago (and five birthdays ago), charity: water’s Founder, Scott Harrison, had a dream to bring safe and clean drinking water to those who need it around the world. More than just providing water, he wanted to find a way for people in the affected areas to be a part of that process, provide them with opportunities to drill wells and know how to fix the water source locally.

In that time, they have donated an always-promised 100% of public donations directly to fund water projects, working in 19 countries with 25 different partners and funded 4,282 projects affecting 2,060,000 people. Wow.

The charity: water 5th Anniversary September Campaign continues to amaze this year. The place where digital and fundraising collide are nowhere more evident than at charity: water. From the beginning their videos and outreach has been unique in that it’s been highly visually appealing and personal. This year steps that up a notch with personal thank you videos from Scott and the staff. Many of them don’t have high page views but they are all personalized and what an incredible thank you that is to the people who donated their birthday instead of asking for presents. They are $60,000 into their goal of $150,000, I made a donation to support them this year. I encourage you to join me!

As an October baby, I am inspired by what they do. Many of you might remember my Cause It’s My Birthday campaign and it’s always so inspiring to see what organizations are doing that is focused on bringing digital into the conversation from the beginning and not just including it as an afterthought.

Find out more by making a donation today, liking their Facebook page, following them on Twitter or watching more of their amazing stories and videos on their media page.

11 Things Learned at Beyond Cause Marketing on How to Build Public/Private Partnerships

September 19th, 2011, by Sloane Berrent. 4 Comments »

On Friday I attended the second annual Beyond Cause Marketing in Boston. Produced by Scott Henderson and the good folks at CauseShift and hosted by Microsoft’s NERD Center, it was a jam-packed opportunity to meet and mix with 60 of the best practitioners in a wide variety of fields including PR, communications, marketing, nonprofits, corporations, government and media. You can see more of the live action, tweets and updates by looking up #BeyondCM.

The theme of the day is the essence of what Beyond Cause Marketing is all about. What happens when you take money off the table? What happens when you go beyond just marketing and really talk about what it takes to move the needle forward. I kept remembering a quote from former President Clinton that says we are meant to leave the next generation with a new set of problems to solve, not leave them our same issues and problems (paraphrased).

It started with a conversation gauntlet led by Brian Reich (author of Shift and Reset: Strategies for Addressing Serious Issues in a Connected Society). This was one of the best innovations in conference-land I’ve seen in a long time. Experts in the field sat in a hot-seat and talked about what they see and experience in the field. The gauntlet included two of my all-time favorites, Robbie Vitrano of Naked Pizza and Becca Colbaugh of JESS3.

I was asked to attend to lead a breakout session where we gathered a small group of attendees to talk about one issue ranging from hackathons to gaming for good and digital storytelling. Other session leads included Joe Waters – who just released Cause Marketing For Dummies (For Dummies (Lifestyles Paperback))- if you haven’t read it you should!

I led a session on public and private partnerships. We outlined 11 keys tips for building a social contract. Think of these as a check-list that you use when looking to build a partnership of any kind. They all don’t have to be used – but the more of them you can incorporate, the better and stronger the partnership.

1. Buy-in from all partners. This can include government, corporate and nonprofit.

2. Identify responsibilities and goals. Who is doing what and how much clarity can you get on this before you start?

3. Do your research. All sides have a responsibility to know who they are doing business with. Do background checks, be prudent in who you partner with.

4. Create a contract of expectations. This is different from a scope of work or a contract. This is something all parties create that outlines what they expect from the partnership and what both sides are going to do to get there.

5. Leverage Resources. Leave nothing on the table.

6. Avoid silos. Collective impact will, by definition, have the most impact. Don’t think you can operate alone – you can’t.

7. Be tactical on timing. Double the money and double the time it’s going to take to build/launch.

8. Hook ‘em. What is the partnership going to do to hook the audience? Don’t forget the PR when you’re building a program. People need to know what you’re doing to support it and tell others.

9. Define measurable goals. The goals can change, but outline them when you start. Don’t be afraid to be bold. Really push for what you want this partnership to accomplish.

10. Reassess the impact of the program. If you’re going to take a partnership to year 2 or year 3, you have to take your measurable goals and align them with the objectives and really look at what you’re looking to do in future years. Critical for all sides to do this – first separately and then together as a team.

11. Take an agile approach. Launch and then reconfigure. Everything doesn’t have to be perfect at launch – often it can’t be – because you have to see the partnership in practice to really know what is going on and that you’re hitting all of your targets, goals and objectives.

This isn’t all of it – but it’s a great start and a lot to chew on. Huge thank you to Scott and his team for providing the atmosphere to engage in this conversation with my peers and stretch my way of thinking about programs from the agency, brand and nonprofit side.

What do you look for when building partnerships?

Check-in for Checkups with Clorox and Children’s Health Fund (CHF)

August 4th, 2011, by Sloane Berrent. No Comments »

I first met the amazing folks from Children’s Health Fund last sumer when I spoke on a panel about Social Media for Social Good at Fundraising Day NY.

I was incredibly moved by their mission and their stories of success. I helped get the word out about a new mobile clinic in New Orleans last summer and have had them in my sights ever since. I was so honored to have been asked to partner with them for a summer campaign with Clorox to do some good.

Through a new social media-driven campaign, Clorox and CHF are working to encourage healthy habits and help provide health care to disadvantaged children. This is the second year CHF and Clorox are partnering and this year’s program is called Check-in for Checkups. You might have been my tweets or posts this summer or heard me talk about in person. I’m THAT passionate about this campaign. I’ve met the good folks from Clorox and their PR agency who helped put this together and it’s the real deal cause marketing campaign that included a multi-year cash donation and then this extra money donated through the help of YOU and people everywhere who share their summer healthy habits online.

For each check-in that you do, Clorox will donate 10 cents, up to $100,000, to CHF to help support their goal of providing half a million health care visits to children in need across the country. What’s amazing is that now when you check-in with your healthy habit, you are not only helping yourself, but also the lives of others. The more you check-in, the more you give back to disadvantaged children across the country.

This issue is so incredibly important since one in five children in the U.S. live in poverty and millions of children do not have access to regular checkups and timely health care visits when sick. As a result, simple childhood health problems, like ear infections and toothaches, can lead to lifelong health issues.

CHF’s mobile medical clinics go into underserved communities to bring ongoing health care to children at schools, community centers, homeless shelters and other places in the heart of the community. In addition to pediatric primary care providers, the CHF network consists of other dedicated health care professionals including dentists, mental health providers and nutritionists.

They are currently at 125,000+ checkins but are looking for 1 million! It’s super easy to get involved. You can either head over to their microsite and enter what your check-in is or send a tweet with the hashtag #checkinforcheckups.

Some of the healthy habits I’ve used this summer include walking to work every day, drinking 8 glasses of water a day, going to yoga each week, making a commitment to healthier eating habits – yours can be anything – but the best part of sharing those healthy habits is not only making them part of your daily life but helping others in the process.

Get in the habit of your summer healthy habit by checking in every day and spread the word! Join me in helping to support equal access to healthcare for children everywhere.

Join Me In Miami Next Week During Sustainatopia

March 31st, 2011, by Sloane Berrent. No Comments »

More than 300 speakers from 40-plus nations will participate in the second annual Social Venture Capital/Social Enterprise Conference and two conferences within a conference: Sustainable Haiti and Media2Movements, organized by Ashoka. They take place April 4-6 at the Miami Beach Convention Center as part of Sustainatopia , a gathering of social entrepreneurs and nonprofit leaders.

I’ll be speaking at two of them and, to kick off the first, my colleague from SocialBrite, JD Lasica, will present a social media bootcamp — please check it out: Move the Needle! How to Mobilize Your Supporters to Take Action. (Email us for a 15% discount code.)

See the agenda. We hope you’ll come on down!

Social Venture Capital/Social Enterprise Conference is the largest annual impact investment conference on the East Coast of the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean. Sustainable Haiti is the largest economic development conference in the world for Haiti, with more than 100 speakers and 40-plus panels over three days.

Sustainatopia Honors: Awards for social good

JD and I will also be on hand at Sustainatopia Honors 2011 presented by Plum TV, an awards ceremony and celebration for those doing social good through impact investing and sustainability. It takes place the evening of April 3 at the swank new Frank Gehry/New World Center.

Honorees include Maria Bello, Selita Ebanks, Romero Britto, Michael Capponi, Americas Business Council Foundation and others. Special guests for the evening include actress Patricia Arquette and musician Tico Torres of Bon Jovi.

Some 60 individual events comprise Sustainatopia Miami, including film, art, music, eco-fashion, food, design and parties taking place on the weekend before start of the impact investment conferences. Sustainatopia will bring together thousands of individuals from over 50 countries, all seeking to make a profound difference and help push the world toward a more sustainable path.

Please share this with any friends who will be in Miami next week! Stay tuned for updates on the conference and the bootcamp.

$100k Raised In 72 Hours for Autism

February 24th, 2011, by Sloane Berrent. 1 Comment »

This is the second post in a series about a recent campaign I worked on with Samsung Hope for Children, the national philanthropic initiative of Samsung, The Dan Marino Foundation and JESS3.

Together, we launched a new social action campaign, “Team Up for Autism,” in conjunction with the first annual WalkAbout for Autism that I wrote about in my last post here.

The initiative set about to help raise awareness and funding in support of medical research, services and treatment programs for children with autism. Samsung pledged to contribute up to $100,000 through this social action challenge, providing a donation of $5 to the Dan Marino Foundation each time someone pledged their support of autism awareness by checking into WalkAbout Autism on Foursquare, sharing an infographic with their Facebook friends or sending a tweet with the hashtag #teamautism. JESS3 created the infographic and I worked with them on the overall digital strategy.

In just 72 hours, we were able to reach our goal of $100,000! To see the infographic click over to TeamUpForAutism.com. It was amazing. We thought it might take a few weeks to reach our goal. What made this campaign special? I think there are a few factors.

First, 1 in 110 children are now said to be diagnosed with autism. That means that just about everywhere you turn people know someone or are related to someone with autism. That’s a powerful base.

Second, during this campaign all of the partners came on board to help spread the word. Many times in campaigns, one of the partners wants to be more involved but for a variety of reasons just isn’t. That affects every single social action. You never know where your most passionate supporters will come from. In this case, we all worked together, setting expectations before launch, and that made a huge difference.
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Happy 5th Birthday charity: water!

11 Things Learned at Beyond Cause Marketing on How to Build Public/Private Partnerships

$100k Raised In 72 Hours for Autism

Search The Causemopolitan

Sloane Berrent

NOLAlicious

Cause It's My Birthday

Gulf Coast Benefit

Kiva