Fighting lice in Vancouver
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April 29th, 2008 by Alex
We knew this day would come. Lice...yuck!
As we struggle to contain the lice outbreak on our kids' heads, we share the following resources and insights:
- Think carefully before using pharmaceutical lice remedies like Nix. They are based on a natural derivative from chyrsanthemums, but that doesn't mean they are necessarily safe or effective. At the very least, you may find that your household gets MORE itchy before it gets LESS itchy. (That's how it worked over here.)
- Don't just treat your household. Ensure your daycare or school CAREFULLY examines all kids' heads, and commits parents to treating kids with lice or nits.
- Educate yourself. The most detailed resources we've found are at http://www.headlice.org
- Spring for the fancy tools. The plastic lice combs that come with most lice treatment products don't begin to do the job. The tea tree oil-based Lice Stop product available at natural health stores contains a much better, metal comb; you can also buy a higher a quality comb from your pharmacist.
- Expect to spend a lot of time and money solving the problem. We're currently spending 2-3 hours per night going over each head with a finetooth comb; and we've already spent $100 having bedding and clothing laundered after we ran out of hot water. (To kill lice, you have to use HOT water and HOT dryer heat.)
- Consider getting professional help. We've just called in the pros at http://www.lice911.ca to make sure we get the job 100% done.
- Build lice checks into your routine. We realize our little one has likely had this problem for a while. If we'd been doing weekly lice checks, we could have tackled this problem much earlier, and had an easier time of it. From now on, we're doing weekly checks on each kid.
- Whatever you do, don't blog about your family's lice. It will only lead to trouble. I'm just sure of it.
Every Human Has Rights makes human rights personal
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April 23rd, 2008 by Alex
For the past two months, I've been part of the digital strategy team for The Elders, an extraordinary NGO that was launched last year by Richard Branson and Peter Gabriel. The vision is to convene a council of elders for the global village; the founding elders include Desmond Tutu, Aung San Suu Kyi, Mary Robinson and Kofi Annan.
As part of this work, I've been supporting the web team for Every Human Has Rights, a campaign to spread awareness and support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This year is the sixtieth anniversary of UDHR, and being part of its celebration is a wonderful echo of one of the first pieces of work I did as a grad student at Harvard, thirteen years ago. (Ouch!) At that time I was a research assistant for Andrew Moravcsik, helping him research an article on international human rights regimes (PDF) that he published in time to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the UDHR.
Moravcsik's article focused particularly on the creation of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR), which, unlike the UNDHR, was designed to be an enforceable document that would give individuals the legal standing to pursue human rights issues in an international court of law. What the ECHR advanced was the idea of personal, individual-level responsibility for human rights advocacy; what it lost was the boldness and breadth of vision of the UDHR.
The EHHR project recognizes that online networks provide a way to have your human rights cake, and eat it too. EHHR is focusing on each of the core themes of the UN Declaration, a sweeping document that addresses basic rights in areas from religion to employement, and from freedom of expression to healthcare. But by asking people around the world to sign on personally -- over the web -- as supporters of that Declaration, it's reawakening the idea that each and every one of us has a role to play in supporting human rights.
And that role doesn't need to be limited to a courtroom. One of the key partners on the EHHR project is Witness, an online NGO that uses video and web technology to tackle human rights abuses around the world. Through EHHR and Witness's user-driven site, The Hub, anyone in the world can be an active advocate for human rights -- a personal witness -- by contributing a video or online story.
EHHR and Witness are just two pieces of a large and growing online ecosystem for supporting human rights worldwide. Global Voices Online gathers bloggers from around the world, including many who are writing under adverse -- even life-threatening -- conditions in their home countries. Ushahidi and the Tunisian Prison Map are putting human rights abuses in Kenya and Tunisia on the map (literally). The Martus project provides digital security tools to protect the effectiveness and safety of people working on the front lines of human rights protection.
The growing online human rights ecosystem of which EHHR is a part didn't exist when Moravcsik wrote his article. At the time, the courts were the best option -- really, the only meaningful option -- for individuals to engage in the public sphere of human rights. What made that interesting to Moravcsik was the way that human rights agreements allowed governments to dig themselves into structural commitments to human rights, with citizens serving as the hypothetical watchdogs.
Today there's a whole new set of tools to give those hypothetical watchdogs real teeth. But now, citizens don't have to wait to be invited into that role, nor do they have to find their way into a courtroom. They just have to pick up a cell phone, a camera, or a keyboard, and they can hold human rights violations accountable in the court of global public opinion.
The technologies are all there....all that's missing is the recognition of meaningful personal accountability for human rights. That's what EHHR puts back in the picture, by asking and every one of us to sign a personal commitment to the bold vision the UN set forth sixty years ago.
Of course, when the Declaration was written, most UN members would not have envisioned a world in which access to global communications could be virtually universal. Now that we have it, it's time to make human rights universal, too.
How your non-profit can earn revenue with Web 2.0: Part 5 - Product sales
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April 22nd, 2008 by Alex
This blog post is part of our series on Social Media for Social Enterprise: How non-profits can earn revenue with Web 2.0.
What bake sales once were to PTAs, online storefronts are to today's non-profits. We're used to thinking about participants in non-profit web sites as members or supporters, people we are trying to reach with a message or mobilize around a campaign. But your online community members can also be customers -- customers who may be delighted to spend their dollars in a way that supports their values and your work.
Here are some of the forms that online product sales can take:
- Schwag: Your site can earn money by selling promotional items (t-shirts, mugs, posters, bumper stickers, yo-yos) with your organization's name or a related message. (I'm waiting for someone to buy me an Obama Mama t-shirt.) This is a great way to get your message out and earn money at the same time. While you can earn more money by mass producing these items for sale, you can limit your risk (or test the waters) by using a print-to-order service like Goodstorm (a printing service set up to support non-profits, and recently acquired by Zazzle) or Café Press.
- Educational materials: If your organization engages in education or issue awareness work, your web site can be a great way to sell or distribute educational materials like books, DVDs or CDs. Think carefully about how to weigh your revenue goals against your desire to get the message out: selling your products at high prices may limit their circulation. On the other hand, shipping stuff for free may make it hard for you to fund development or distribution.
- Media downloads: Selling educational or cultural products electronically is a terrific way to earn revenue while limiting distribution costs. If your organization has produced a book, magazine, poster, DVD or CD, could you sell it in electronic form? Once you create an electronic version of any of these products, the marginal cost of each additional sale is zero: selling a thousand copies of your Christmas concert in MP3 form costs no more than selling ten. Again, think about the trade-off between revenue and mission: distributing media products electronically for free (or very cheap) is also a great way to get out your message.
- Social enterprise: If your organization supports community enterprise, you can sell the products of that enterprise on your site. Tilonia.com is an online store specifically created to sell the products of the Barefoot College.
- Mission-aligned products: Even if you're not directly involved in a community enterprise, you can still find mission-aligned products to sell on your site. For example, an organization promoting responsible forestry could sell recycled paper products. You can stock a warehouse and ship products yourself, or you can partner with a retailer or social enterprise, and earn transaction fees from each sale that is processed by or referred from your site.
- Affiliate sales: If you don't want to deal with the costs of production, fulfillment and credit card processing -- or you want to test your visitors' appetite for on-site purchasing before you make an investment -- consider setting up affiliate sales. The Amazon Associates program is a great, unobtrusive way of generating revenue from books or other products you happen to mention on your site; linking those recommendations to an Amazon account earns you dollars and makes the follow-up process easier for your readers. The BookSense affiliate program is similar, but sends your visitors' business to independent booksellers. For a wider range of potential advertisers, check out Commission Junction, which runs affiliate programs for many major retailers.
Before you setup your virtual storefront, here are some issues to consider:
- Do our visitors like to shop online? Unless your site visitors include a meaningful number of people who already buy products online, they're probably not going to start with you.
- What products do our visitors want? If you're already selling products,you know which t-shirts or community products are most popular with your members and supporters. If you've never sold products before, do some market testing before you commit to production or sales.
- How much will it cost us to set up our sales capacity? There are lots of e-commerce options, including Paypal, that make it easy to set up storefronts and complete credit card transactions. Be prepared to invest some money to make your storefront look good, and to make it easy for people to shop. Invest in airtight security for credit card transactions -- ideally avoiding any in-house handling of credit card numbers.
- How much will it cost us to fulfill our orders? Look for products that have low marginal costs to produce or ship. Information products (like document, music or video downloads) are ideal because once you produce your first unit, every additional unit sold is virtually 100% profit. If you're producing physical products look carefully at the costs of both product design and fulfillment, and figure out the price point and sales volume that optimizes your profit margins.
- Can we outsource production or fulfillment in a way that aligns with our mission? Outsourcing the production of your product or fulfillment of your orders can save you time and money, and keep your organization focused on its core mission. But be sure that you outsource in a way that supports your mission and values. Find out about the wages and labor conditions of your contractors; if you wouldn't feel comfortable seeing that information disclosed with your organization's name attached to it, look for another option. Better yet, look for contractors who actively reflect what you stand for: if you're a women's organization, look for women-owned businesses. If you're a development organization, look for partners in countries where you work.
I'll venture to say that most non-profits have at least a couple of good options for products they can produce and sell online. If you have loyal members or active supporters, you have a message that people want to hear. Figure out whether that message fits better on a t-shirt or in an e-book, and you're on your way.
A mathemetician, a librarian, and a web strategist walk into a bar…
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April 1st, 2008 by Alex
I know, it sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. (Or a great cartoon! Rob, care to give it a try?)
But believe me, if you asked them to write a document, the mathematician and the librarian would come out ahead. Why?
Brackets.
You know, like
(2+2) X (18/3)
Or like
("climate change" OR sustainability) AND (water OR H20)
But here I am, the lonely web strategist, struggling to write a document that repeatedly uses the phrase, "external engagement and social media strategy advice and support". I know what I mean, but will the client?
What I really need is Boolean syntax. Why shouldn't I be able to write in the form,
(((external engagement AND social media) strategy)) advice AND support
See, isn't that MUCH clearer now?
How your non-profit can earn revenue with Web 2.0: Part 3 - Earning revenue with advertising
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April 1st, 2008 by Alex
Welcome to the latest installment in our series on revenue sources for non-profit social media projects. Today, I'm looking at what many non-profits first think of (and often, recoil at) when it comes to earning money online: advertising.
If your site attracts a lot of visitors -- or even a niche community of visitors that advertisers want to reach -- you can place advertising on your site to generate revenue. There are three types of advertising to consider:
- An ad service. Ad services handle all the work of finding advertisers, and place ads onto your site based on your content or keywords. In return, they take a (usually large) percentage of ad revenue. The most widely-used service is Google Adsense, which places advertising on your site based on keywords; this means you may have some ads appear on your site that don't fit with your message (for example, a web page about endangered fish may end up displaying ads for fish recipes) but you can veto ads as you identify problems. Other services focus on building specific communities of content based on quality; for example, Federated Media is an ad network for high-traffic bloggers. Some ad services place plaintext ads; others place images; Google itself gives the option of text or images.
- Your own ad system. If you want more control over the ads that appear on your site, you can sell ad space yourself. You can sell ads on a "per impression" (advertisers pay for how many times their ads get shown) or a "per click" (advertisers pay for how many times people actually click through to their ads) basis. You can sell ads that show up anywhere or everywhere on your site ("run of site" advertising) or you can sell ads on specific pages (for example, a youth-oriented brand may want to place ads specifically on your youth services page). You can place multiple ads on a single page, and you can charge higher rates for more prominent pages or spaces -- for example, the top banner ad on your home page will likely command the highest price on your site. Selling your own ads means you can keep all the revenue you generate, but be aware of both cost of sales (you'll need someone to sell those ads) and technical costs (for payment processing and setting up a system for placing your ads).
- Sponsorships. As a non-profit organization, you may prefer advertiser "sponsorship" to traditional advertising. A sponsor (or set of sponsors) typically supports the entire site, though it is also possible to have specific sponsors support specific programs or areas of the site, particularly if they are highly specialized or resource-intensive. You could have one organization as the supporting sponsor of your main site, and another organization as the sponsor of an online community for a specific group of users (e.g. a community of young mothers). Sponsors will typically be credited as the sponsor of a site with a (potentially quite prominent) display of their name, logo, and possibly a tag line, but rarely place a full message on the site as they would with an ad (although in some cases sponsorship could include advertising). Sponsorship can feel less commercialized than an ad (which some organizations feel uncomfortable placing on their sites) and may have tax advantages for the sponsor, compared with advertising.
Advertising is one of the most obvious ways for a non-profit to earn revenue from its web presence -- and if you use a service like Adsense, one of the easiest ways, too. But many non-profits are wisely cautious about placing ads on their site. Typical concerns include:
- possible conflict with non-profit tax status
- appearance of being overly commercialized
- driving traffic away from the non-profit's own site
- introducing off-message ads or content
Before you decide whether advertising is the right fit for you, consider:
- How much revenue do you stand to earn? If you a have a low-traffic site, the upside of advertising is limited.
- How will ads affect the perception of your site and organization? Ads feel particularly inappropriate on sites with a deeply personal or difficult message. Imagine how you'd feel if you saw an ad on a campaign page about Darfur.
- What form of advertising would earn the most revenue? Consider whether to go with "per click" ads (which pay only if your visitors follow the links) or "per impression" ads (which pay simply for appearing).
- How can you test advertising options? Ads aren't all or nothing. Consider placing ads on a few pages on your site, and asking for feedback before you proceed.
- How will advertising affect other possibilities for revenue generation? Be sure to look at the other options we cover in this series. It might be that an option like premium service would yield more income -- and your premium service could be an ad-free version.
Resources to help you learn more:
Using Google Adsense to generate income for your church or non-profit organization
A look at some Adsense alternatives