Facebook’s seemingly daily schedule of changes in policy, nomenclature, and tools had rendered some details in the ebook already in need of updating (updates are in progress), the crux remains true: no matter the constellation of tools, page types, and lingo (are you a “fan” or do you just “like” me?), you should have an approach to gathering actionable analytics that tell you what works, what doesn’t, and what you should test.

You can download the free ebook here: http://www.bit.ly/cvA35T.  In the meantime, three interesting things you’ll find in it’s pages:

1) Engagement with Facebook content doesn’t correlate with action for UNICEF-USA. The number of “likes” or comments on a posting do not have a strong relationship with the clickthrough rate for that posting. Since conversions – people completing the donation process – depend on clickthrough for UNICEF-USA, likes and comments aren’t strongly linked to donations, either.  This is sure to be controversial, and we recommend that UNICEF-USA set up tests to confirm this finding and explore what the real implications are for long term giving.

2) More content isn’t better. On days that UNICEF-USA posted more than three times, their unsubscribe rate rose dramatically and clickthrough decreased.  The exception to this rule was during the immediate aftermath of major natural disasters.

3) Wednesdays are the best days for clickthrough. Over eight months of data, Wednesday is consistently the best day of the week for UNICEF-USA’s clickthrough, regardless of the specific content.

Of course, the findings for your audience might be completely different, which is why we also recommend an approach to building your own measurement program.  Check out the ebook here, and as always, let us know what you think!

The thrust of the proclamations is this: it’s time to move past counting clicks and obsessing about list size.  The number of fans you have or Twitter followers you’ve amassed isn’t the important thing.  The important thing is whether the work you’re doing is making the change in the world your organization exists to make.   The manifesto urges some shifts in thinking that are bound to be controversial.

We’ve endorsed the Web Thinking Manifesto, and hope you’ll read the whole thing: http://bit.ly/d5Nxxc.  It’s caused a bit of a stir in our sector.  We’ve been pondering on it quite a bit and have landed on our favorite proclamations, those we’re a bit skeptical of, and humbly offer up an 11th proclamation:

We love these proclamations:

Proclamation 2: We Will Engage Web Thinkers in Leadership
We will make it mandatory for the people in charge of Internet and digital strategies to be in senior staff meetings – and be sure they serve at the highest level of the organization. Planning a new campaign or initiative without “new media” at the table is as foolish as holding that same meeting without Communications or Membership Directors.

Yes yes yes! Even better…Communications and Membership should include online thinkers as leaders, since online tactics are carrying ever more of the water in those departments.

Proclamation 3: We Will Engage Everyone in Web Thinking
We will understand the difference between IT and the Internet and ensure all staff share responsibility for leveraging the web in their daily work. Not everyone will understand the latest tools and tricks, but collectively, we will appreciate the web’s value and the critical role it plays in the lives of our audiences.

We’re well past the era where anyone should ever confuse the roles of the people who make sure our computers work (bless you, IT team!) and the people who communicate, recruit, fundraise and more using computers to connect to the world.

Proclamation 10: We Will Be Nimble
We will move at the speed of the Internet – and the instantaneous news cycle. We will set up structures that eschew bureaucracy and allow us to move both quickly and strategically. Organizations that are positioned to respond rapidly are rewarded. We will redefine what it means to be proactive on issues. We will create and distribute news directly and we will hijack, adapt, and redirect the traditional news cycle to fit our campaigns and issues.

Again, yes yes yes. The behemoths who need 2 hour senior staff meetings and three weeks to make small adjustments to message and audience will be left in the dust. Nimble and quick are the quintessential keys to success these days, for better and for worse.

We’re unconvinced about these:

Proclamation 1: We Will Position Ourselves as Movement Leaders
We will be more concerned with our cause, our broader mission in the world than with building a brand or institution. And we will reflect this reality in all of our work. We seek to work across traditional boundaries of race, class, gender identification and religion to build alliances that truly represent the people impacted by our issues. We can’t be afraid to talk about other efforts in our space, to link generously and be genuinely proud of the successes of our friends and allies. Their success drives our success and drives the change that makes our existence worthwhile.

We’re skeptical because we think brands and institutions do matter in this increasingly fragmented world. It’s harder than ever to tell real grassroots from astroturf, advocacy from advertising, and genuine voices from those generated by “social media experts.”  We love the emphasis on coordination, cooperation, and sharing credit and successes… we’re just not sure developing well-respected brands and institutions don’t play an important role in all that generosity.

Proclamation 4: We Will Hire Digital Natives
We will embrace millennials because we understand the difference between learning about technology and growing up digital – between speaking Internet as a foreign language and speaking web natively. Internet culture is radically changing the way people engage not only with one other but also with organizations. Transparency, collaboration, and open dialog – millennials can show us how to develop these cultural norms and values. We will listen and learn with them.

Pluralities if not majorities of the people who do the most work for many organizations and causes, particularly those that have been around for more than a decade or two, are older than millenials and approach online tools for engaging causes and making a difference in the world much differently than digital natives.  Yes, we need millenials.  But we also need people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and even older (gasp!) to help bridge digital divides and gaps in how people of different generations, access, and comfort levels with technology want to connect and plug in.

We hope Michael and Tim add this:

We Will Remember That It’s Not About The Campaign
We will not obsess solely about clickthrough and sizes of lists (in house and dispersed) and will not celebrate just tactical victories. We will obsess about power maps and strategic intelligence, not just application of the newest-best-most-visible-everyone’s-dong-it-latest apps. We will keep our eye on the ball and evaluate openly and honestly whether our tactics are connected to real life change.

What do you think?  Weigh in on the conversation here http://bit.ly/d5Nxxc or in the comments.

Michael was on the ground for the climate movement’s efforts in Copenhagen a couple of months ago, and came away with an impression of a policy making process largely immune to the outputs of the movement’s work.  He proposes a refocusing, noting, “it is incumbent upon all of us to avoid getting so caught up in the art and craft of our online engagement and online campaigning work that we’re blinded to the reality of the people we’re trying to influence — or the landscape in which we’re operating.”  It’s a brave and insightful post and I hope you’ll read the whole thing.

In support of refocusing, we’re offering up a trio of ideas that we think can guide the way toward more effective more world-changing work, online and offline.

1. Measure for outcomes, not just inputs and outputs. It sounds obvious, but as a sector we focus relentlessly on inputs (how many emails did we send, how often did we tweet, and what’s on our campaign website?) and outputs (how many calls to legislative offices did we generate, how many people visited our website,  and how many of them signed up for our email list?), but very little on outcomes.  As we noted in a December Three Things on measuring outcomes, we tend to focus on inputs and outputs because it’s incredibly difficult to figure out how to measure outcomes in a complex environment with many moving parts and murky causality.  Difficult as it is, it’s a vital next step.

2. Remember that organizations don’t have friends. The buzzwords in online organizing are “community” and “engagement.”  Communities are great and cultivating and engaging them is a time-tested touchpoint of grassroots organizing, but mission-driven organizations need donors, activists, volunteers, grasstops leaders and sound connections within well-thought power maps.  Engagement for engagement’s sake can lead us to generate a ton of outputs (ie. Facebook fans and Twitter followers) unconnected to meaningful outcomes. We wrote about this before, too, here and here.

3. Become a power mapping pro. Most, if not all, of the policy change work we do depends ultimately on the decisions of a very few people, be they members of Congress on key committees, policy makers in the US administration, business leaders, high profile members of the media or a city council member or two.  Online campaign strategists should bring to the table a commitment to understanding what really influences those people, and endeavor always to keep investments and activities narrowly focused on those pathways of influence.  Sometimes mass grassroots actions are the right way to go, other times they’re not.  For a terrific example of power mapping in practice, check out this write up of the successful campaign to get Lou Dobbs off of CNN, in part using Facebook ads mictrotargeted to CNN/Time-Warner employees.

Clearly I’m missing some things in this list – and it might be the wrong list altogether, I’d love to know what you think! – but if we can get more focused on outcomes, on relationships that move our mission, and on focusing our efforts only where they can have an impact on decision-makers, I think we’ll see more of the change we’re working for.

2009 was all about finding and using new tools to identify numbers to attach to communications activities. The sector grew more sophisticated in terms of thinking about numbers to track and tools to track them. From Google Analytics to Facebook Fan Page Insights, information that used to be utterly unavailable or accessible only to tech geeks very comfortable with the programming back end of the inter-tubes is now readily available to most anyone with a login.

2010 will be about figuring out what those numbers mean, and how to apply them to measuring the inputs, outputs, and results that matter for non-profits and advocacy efforts.

Our friend Shabbir Safdar is ahead of the curve. Last week he published, “How are my efforts on facebook contributing to my organization’s overall goals?” While I’m not sure he’d describe it this way, I read it as a salvo on the notion that our various outputs – status updates, wall posts, exhortations to “become a fan” – are necessarily distinct from desired outputs – donations, volunteer hours, petition signatures, etc.

Quoting Shabbir:

While PR measurement experts like KD Paine (one of my heroes) can measure things like “message retention” of your social networking efforts, the easy way to measure the effectiveness of this work on facebook is to track how it hits your bottom line.  When your efforts results in an organization-wide goal (money, volunteers, sponsors) that is easy to understand even by people who don’t understand the Internet, there’s no debate about the benefit or budgeting of Facebook.

You can create a few metrics from a couple of basic data points:
1. the number of fans you have on a given day you make a fan page status post (gathered from your Fan Page Insights);
2. the number of fans that click on the link to your landing page; and
3. the number of conversions these visits from Facebook generate.

From these data points, you can then build and track the following actionable metrics:
1. clickthru rate of your facebook posts;
2. conversion rate of facebook traffic; and
3. conversion rate of all other “organic” traffic.

Once you have these metrics, you should be able to examine them and look to connect improvements or degradations in the results to specific actions. Do all my status updates without a photo perform worse than those with a photo of the land being conserved? Then we should always use a photo!

And he goes on to take on one of the sacred cows of social networking more generally – that engagement is what really matters (we took this cow on awhile back, too: Organizations Don’t Have Friends, and Three Things: Engagement? But I’m Already Married!)

Your first reaction to seeing this might be “Hey, wait, I’ve got lots of people clicking ‘Like’ on my status updates, and ‘Share’ and playing my videos.  Doesn’t that count for something?”

Well, to be concise about it, not really.

Shabbir closes out his post with detailed instructions for applying analytics to measuring results – outputs that matter when it comes to furthering your organization’s mission.

So, our first (and maybe our only) prediction for 2010: more of the communications sector will go the way of Shabbir, away from analytics per se and toward improved measurement. At least, we hope so.  (And we hope you’ll read his whole post, especially if your organization is expending resources on Facebook.)

I finished college just before Friendster starting becoming popular.  You remember Friendster right?  Although nowhere close to the original network, it was the first that was widely popular.  Over the next few years, MySpace briefly took the lead before Facebook became king of the hill, at least for the moment.  Twitter is right on Facebook’s heals.  I bring this up because all of these networks were new to me as I started working.

And I’ve found that’s the case with many organizations.  Leadership in many organizations are nervous about committing resources to social media because using the tools can feel like speaking in a foreign language: you can feel the energy but can’t quite understand what’s happening.

That is this week’s Three Things: Three things to help those new to social media feel more comfortable getting started.

1) It’s just technology. You know a tool that can be used for many things including connecting with old friends or sharing news, wisdom, photos, powerful stories, random stories and much more.  We did most of the things that social media allows us to do before Friendster or Facebook.  We used to find old friends in our alumni directory.  We sent newspaper clippings or other short stories around the office or mailed them to old colleagues.  We sent newsletters or created elaborate annual reports for members and donors.  We communicated by phone, mail and email.

Now, social media, like all new technology, makes it easier to communicate with bigger audiences using less resources.  And more importantly it makes it easy for your audience to spread your story to their networks.  Anything you used to share offline can now be shared online.

2) Like with everything in the world, persistence pays. While social media makes it easier to do things, it’s not magic.  Sure you may know an organization that got lucky or had a brilliant idea that spread like wildfire and accomplished amazing things on Twitter or Facebook.  But in general, the rewards of social media come from consistently using a tool, and constantly measuring and improving your performance.

You’ll undoutbtedly make mistakes early on as your learning the community you choose to engage.  Learn from them.  As long as you know what you’re trying to accomplish and what progress looks like, then keep at it. Keep sharing relavent content, keep learning and improving and your persistence will reward you.

3) It’s not new. As Adam Singer points out, it’s been around in one form or another for a decade.  In many ways it’s reached a tipping point.  Especially when you consider the number of parents who now join Facebook because it’s the only way they can see pictures of their grandchildren.

But just because it’s new to many folks (like your organization), doesn’t make it new to everyone. If your organizations’ target audience (members, donors, etc.) is already online, chances are they are already pretty active on one or more social networks. If they aren’t yet, they will be next month or next year.  That’s an opportunity for your organization.  Make sure it’s not a missed opportunity.

That’s it.  There is plenty more to learn that others can help with or that you will learn on your own along the way, but if you start here, you can begin to invest in this not so new tool so it can pay off for your organization down the road.

When trying to activate donors, members, or activists to take action, asking only once leaves a lot of potential “actions” on the table. Most of the time, asking several times still doesn’t maximize what your members are willing to do.

For anything that you’re going to ask for, you should plan to ask for it at least three times, preferably in a pre-planned series of messages.  This includes donations, membership renewals, calls to their legislators, surveys, etc.  A series of messages helps create urgency, reach more members and show progress through the campaign (or mini-campaign). This series of messages can be all email, but it certainly doesn’t have to be.  Here are a few ways in which it can work:

Email series: The most likely and easiest channel for many non-profits.  You have an annual fundraising campaign.  You plan a series of 3 messages over a 1-2 month period.  The emails focus on a central theme, set out a goal from the beginning and then gently push members to help you reach it.  

Or, you know that you have legislation coming for a vote in 3 weeks.  Before sending that first email blast, plan 3 email blasts, with the the second and third messages in the series increasing their urgency and push.

Email auto-responders: Don’t be scared off by the ‘auto,’ part, either because it sounds hard or you think it’s less than personal.  When users sign up for your email list or join your organization, is there something they can do right away that will contribute to the cause and get the more invested?  My guess is yes.  In addition to the initial welcome message (that has a follow up ask, right?), follow it a few days later and a week or so later with another easy ask.   The ask can be timeless so it applies to someone who joins in February or June. Recent subscribers are the most likely to be fired up and ready to act.  Don’t wait until you’re next campaign to put them to work.

On the flip side, do you have users who haven’t take any action more than six months?  A year?  Set up a short mini-campaign of automated messages to dormant users.  Enlist their feedback, have them take a survey or some other ask to bring them back into the fold.

The best part of auto-responders is that you can set them up once and then you’re users will get at the time you set (when they join, after not taking action for a period of time, etc.  You should, however, review/refresh these messages every quarter or six months.

Offline follow ups: There isn’t any reason that your series of messages has to be through one channel.  In fact, there is a lot of research that shows that making a touch in a second channel can increase the potency of your campaign.  Some possible ways to follow up offline:

Post cards: For your next annual fundraising campaign, insert a post card as the second message between two emails.  This not only gives you the additional touch, but stands out a little as it is in a different medium.

Direct mail: Direct mail also works better in a series of messages, but that series doesn’t have to be all snail mail.  If you have a series of 3 letters, try adding a touch or replacing a letter with an email message.

Automated Phone calls:  Many are not fans of ‘robo-calls,” and count me as one.  But in certain contexts, they may be helpful.  One popular method with advocacy is the patch-through call.  It starts with an auto-mated message on your particular issue with an ask for the user to press 1 to be connected to their legislator’s office to voice their opinion.  Consider inserting a call like this into your email series to make it quick and easy for your members to deliver your message to legislators.

Phone Calls: Set up a phone program to chase your email, mail or other communications. Using patch-through technology is still possible, but this can also be used for fundraising, surveys and other asks.

Very Personal Phone calls: Probably not ideal for larger organizations, but if you have the capacity to identify previously active users (regular small donors who haven’t given recently, users who took 3 or more actions last year, but none this, etc.), then consider making a really personal touch.  As part of a campaign, reach out to 10 or 20 users and ask them to help with today’s priority.  If they do, they are also a little more likely to pay attention to future messages.  If they don’t, you may be able to get some feedback for future improvements.  This could also work for your high value users (recurring donors, users who take action on every message): ask them to take the next step by recruiting/organizing supporters or more.

And don’t forget about:

Twitter, Facebook et al:  Social networking does provide another touch and more importantly provides a way for your members to share your asks with their networks (aka potential new supporters).  If you turn any ask into a campaign (or mini-campaign if that sounds easier), then be sure to tweet or update your facebook friends multiple times to show momentum and ask them to help. You’ll probably even find a few new leaders this way by seeing who constantly re-tweets or shares your updates with their networks.  Don’t forget to engage them.

So, the next time you think you’re ready to ask your members to take action, take a few minutes and decide how you’re going to make sure they hear the ask at least three times.  It can be a combination of any of the above.  And as always, measure your results along the way to see what works best for your organization.

-Stephen

“…the use of social medial for nonprofit fundraising is:

• the greatest thing since sliced bread, or
• a flash in the pan that doesn’t deserve the attention it’s getting and will be over before you know it.”

I agree with Heaven that this argument is a lot more nuanced.  I would file it as another entry under, “it’s a tool, not a strategy.”  And this new tool is less like email and direct mail and more like your finance committee and annual fundraising event.

Social media sites are just another way (with tons of potential) to engage your supporters.  Facebook doesn’t make it any easier for YOU (ABC Non-profit Director of Development) to raise money online, it makes it easier for your supporters to engage their friends and networks to raise money for your organization.  Just like your finance committee or you annual 5k run/walk-a-thon/other event are tools that require major commitment from members, utilizing social media also requires your members to do the heavy lifting.  

The tools, white not ubiquitous, there are plenty.  They range from off-the shelf solutions that can be customized and integrated with your web site (Convio’s Team Raiser, ActBlue,) to external sites (FirstGiving, ChipIn) to social networking applications (Facebook Causes).  

Any of these tools make it possible for your members to set up fundraising pages to raise money for the organization.  Each of these tools not only provide the mechanism for making a contribution, but also allow them to publicly set and track those goals as well as reach out to their networks to raise money.

But I would advise NOT focusing on the tool.  Any of the above (and many more) could work for your organization.  If you want social networking to be “the greatest thing since sliced bread,” then you need to find the storytellers and networkers in your group and help them tell your story.

Social networking sites have great potential not because they allow you to connect to potential donors (or members, activists, etc.), but because they allow your members to share their passion for your cause with their networks. 

So what should you focus on to make social networking a successful way to raise funds and friends?  I would follow a similar process to setting up your finance committee or recruiting hosts for your annual event:

• Identify the people are most passionate about your cause.  Make it super easy for them to tell their story, set up their fundraising page and identify how to push it out to their friends.
• Identify the supporters who are the best networkers/social-networkers.  We all know the person who has 1000 facebook friends or followers on twitter.  Share stories from others to help them develop their story.  Once they are on board, these people often master the tools themselves.
• Use the organization’s presence to amplify the voices of it’s members.  Share their posts on facebook, retweet their tweets asking for support to their network.  This not only supports your early adopters, but will help in recruiting more folks to do the same.
• Rinse and repeat.  Help promote those once they’ve started and keep working to identify new people to grow your list of raisers.

In summary: Tools only work when you use them well.  Fundraising (or friend raising) is about building and utilizing relationships.  Social media is another tool that makes it easier for your organization’s supporters to advance your mission.  If the tool isn’t working, focus on helping the people using it, not the tool itself.

-Stephen

At it’s core, Web 2.0 is just technology giving us more tools to share content and be social.  Where articles used to be clipped from newspapers or magazines and passed around the office with the checklist on top to make sure everyone sees it, now they are emailed, tweeted, Digg’ed, tagged or posted to facebook.  Content sharing tools allows you to turn your members, users, or readers into messengers.

This week’s three things answers the question: how I do help my content (AKA message) spread?

1) Shocker – ASK for it. Make sure you have put the tools in place so that all of your blog posts, web site pages or emails have the social media chiclets (the little button with facebook or twitter icons or that says “share this”).  They are very easy to add to your site with almost every CMS.  Once they are there, don’t be afraid to ask users to take advantage of them.

2) Share yourself.  Engage your membership on social networks.  Share content from your site and others through facebook, twitter, and other networks.  You’re content will spread to new audiences and people who think their friends woudl benefit from it will share it again.

3) Know why you’re content should be shared and is being shared. Content is King.  You already deliver high quality, relevant and timely content to your members through your web site and email communications.  The content ties directly to your organization’s mission and helps your members learn more, advocate better or accomplish whatever else your organization is working on this year.  Make sure the content you produce and highlight is the most relevant to this year’s goals.  The more engaging and relevant your content, the more your members will want to talk about it.

The second part – why your content is being shared. Use new tracking tools to track what type of content users share more often.  Are particular topics shared more?  Particular types of pitches?  Learn what works best so you can to replicate the success.

Those are three basic tips to get started.  Do you have other tips to that have worked in spreading your content to others?

And that’s the Three Things for this week! Do you have Three Things you’d like to get off your chest? Shoot us an email – we’d love to feature your ideas in this space!

Oh and one last thing – if you like this or any other posts on our blog – be friendly and share them by clicking “Share This” below. Thanks!

1. Be clear about what “engagement” means to your organization.  Is it as simple as clickthrough in your emails or number of fans on your organization’s Facebook page? Or is it more involved than that – people commenting on your organizational or staff blog, replying to and retweeting your Twitter status, recruiting people to join your Facebook Cause or something else?  “Engagement” is fuzzy (unless it’s leading to a wedding day…).  Sharpen up those edges.

2.  Honestly assess your goals for engagement.  Sometimes, you can be more clear-eyed about this if you think through scenarios.  If you have 100,000 fans on your Facebook page and 10% of them share information you put there with their networks, but only 1% ever donates (directly or via Causes), will that meet your goals?  Are you pursuing engagement to acquire new donors, increase the average donation or donation frequency among existing donors, raise awareness of an issue or problem, or generate more or higher quality activism actions? Think about this as clearly as you would your goals for launching a new direct mail program or a new grassroots program – at the end of a given period of time, what will have made it worth it?

3. Budget “engagement” activities realistically and according to your goals. While Facebook pages and Twitter accounts are free, maintaining then and undertaking the activities necessary to make them do anything for your organization can be expensive. Budget in the staff time, design time (if you’ll be needing logos, images, or other assets), the time needed to engage your fans in conversation, cultivation, and action, and do that in accordance with your goals.  Consider the things that won’t happen if time, talent, and treasure is directed at managing social networking tasks, and factor that into your budget, too.

As I noted on Monday, engagement for engagement’s sake isn’t a responsible use of organizational resources.  This isn’t to say that engagement isn’t a good idea, just that it should be resolutely directed toward advancing your organization’s mission and marshaling the support (and supporters) needed to do that well.   In our experience, if you start with these Three Things – definition, goal-setting, and budgeting – you’re much more likely to do engagement right.

What have you found?  Did your organization take a different approach?  Let us know in the comments!  And, as always, if you’ve got Three Things you’ve been dying to tell the world, shoot us an email – we’d love to share your ideas in this space!

Reaction to the article was swift and fierce, with the bulk of the outrage seeming to point in the direction of defending online engagement – in this case, presumably building and cultivating Supporters via Facebook Causes – for it’s own sake because that engagement will eventually yield mission-critical results (some examples of very smart reactions along those lines: Beth Kanter and Allison Fine).  There was also a fair amount of outrage regarding outdated assumptions built into the author’s assessment of fundraising via Facebook, mainly that such activities are geared toward extracting dollars, or turning supporters into donors.  In this day and age, we should not treat our lists as ATM machines, but as… friends?

While I think there often is value in engagement, I object strongly to the argument that engagement for engagement’s sake is a responsible strategy for organizations.  Setting aside the ranting about treating the internet as an ATM machine, it’s critical to remember that individuals engage online for different reasons than organizations.  I’ve just reconnected on Facebook with the woman who was my best friend when we were neighbors as ten-year-olds.  We live a time zone apart now and we engage for the sake of engagement – our connection is important to us as individuals, regardless of any future payoff.  When an organization engages, it’s to further a specific mission – to help that organization deliver better services, more effectively change policy or elect someone.  Individuals need connection to friends, family, coworkers… the social network part of social networking.   Organizations need connection to supporters – donors, volunteers, and activists – and hope to tap into social networks to make those connections.  To confuse the two types of connections is silly and problematic.

So, should you venture forth and add Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking tools to your fundraising toolkit?  Maybe.  If you have resources to spare to make sure you’re engaging people and time to wait to see if they’ll turn into supporters.  Even if you have neither time nor resources to spare when it comes to raising money, it might make sense for you to engage your supporters where they’re already spending time for other reasons.  But at the end of the day, as an organization you need supporters who will take specific actions to further your mission.  Don’t engage online unless you’re clear on the who, how, and why social networking tools are the best way to get you there.

UPDATED: Of course my friends  Shabbir Safdar and Jason Alcorn are crazy smart and already all over this.  Check out their post on measuring the impact of social media: How One Nonprofit Measures the Impact of its Social Media Marketing.