grassroots solutions’ own Dana Montgomery and Sarah Hassell recently attended the 2010 NTEN Nonprofit Technology Conference in Atlanta, Georgia.  It was a very informative few days and a great opportunity to learn more about emerging technologies that can help to advance the work of nonprofits across the country.

Not surprisingly, the various forms of social media were the main focus areas, specifically how organizations can utilize new media to build awareness, generate support, increase membership, and fundraise more effectively while staying true to their mission.  As organizers, the biggest take-aways for Dana and Sarah were:

• Social media is just one part of an organization’s overall strategy, another tool in the organizer’s toolbox.  Before you jump in, evaluate how it fits with your overall strategy and determine how it will actually help you accomplish your goals.
• Don’t silo social media. Make sure your online strategies are integrated with your offline efforts. Together, they can encourage action and sustain engagement.
• Implementing social media strategies – and seeing successful returns on investment – takes time.  Social media is not a silver bullet.  Your organization will not suddenly find itself with an overwhelming number of active supporters just because you created a Facebook page.
• To truly build support – and sustain that support – organizations need to spend as much time educating and engaging their members online as they do offline. You may have thousands of Facebook fans or Twitter followers, but that doesn’t mean you have thousands of active supporters.  You still have to seek out and build relationships with those super volunteers and influencers.

Many NTEN attendees were also asking what they should do with social media if they have very limited capacity, a common dilemma for many of the clients grassroots solutions works with.  Dana and Sarah always tell our clients to start with their goals, not with the technology – and then look realistically at their capacity, their timeline for achieving their goals, and their resources.  At that point, we find that our clients can more clearly assess how viable it is within their organization to move into social media, at what scale, and how aggressively.  Your organizing plan should reflect what you can realistically achieve on a day-to-day basis, not some ideal state you aspire to.  One of the presenters said it best:  “You don’t go to the hardware store before you know what you need to fix the sink.” At the end of the day, it is a cohesive strategy, not one tactic alone that helps organizations successfully achieve their goals. The key to social media success is knowing when and where to use it.

For more on the 2010 NTEN Nonprofit Technology Conference, check out the grassroots solutions YouTube Channel for Dana and Sarah’s on-the-street interviews. Session materials from the conference are also now available online: http://www.nten.org/blog/2010/04/28/theyre-here-10ntc-session-materials-now-online