Recently at the Tides Center in San Francisco, Alix Johnson and Asiyah Abdul-Mu’min shared their stories of how, as young women working with The Body Positive, they began to transform their own isolation into self-acceptance.  Both young women now live in harmony with their bodies, free to pursue their passions and goals.

The Body Positive has become a presence at the University of California, Berkeley, among other universities across the country where students are becoming Body Positive leaders on campus. The organization conducts workshops to teach the four competencies of its Intuitive Health Model, which leads individuals to creating more positive and healthy relationships with their bodies. The ultimate goal is to support young women in overcoming the body hatred endemic in our culture so they can fully pursue their dreams and goals, and this can only be achieved through the promotion of programs such as The Body Positive.

Since 1996, The Body Positive has directly trained hundreds of high school and college women as leaders, to enhance their own body esteem and self-acceptance, and to support their peers. Further, they have provided education to thousands of parents to assist them in raising children with healthy body images, and distributed their BodyTalk video series for viewing by more than a million youth worldwide.

Photo Credit: larrydyer.com

From left to right:

Taira Jordan, Meredith Beam, Carmen Sobczak, Connie Sobczak, Dan Beam, Uma Teesdale, Elizabeth Scott, Alix Johnson, Jacquie Moore, Asiyah Abdul-Mu’min, Kath Delaney, and Nancy Tripathi

I agree with Gina’s statement to a certain extent. Quote:

“Facebook… is actually going more in the direction of connecting you with the people you have strong relationships with your real identity, with status messages, and with photo sharing… Twitter’s about news and real time events.”

Ning instead is about building (strong) relationships with people you may not know in real life. So they overlap nicely to a certain degree, in terms of what they allow you as an individual or as a business to do.

But I still feel they are in direct competition, not only against each other but with all other things that pull us in different directions in our lives. We each may belong to dozens of social networks (online), be a part of multiple networks (offline -think your children’s PTA, homehowner’s associations, trade groups, etc.) and each of these expect a chunk of our time. No matter how effective we are, days are still 24 hours long and we have a few hours we need to sleep every day. So in the end Ning, Facebook, Twitter and all manifestations of social media in our lives are in direct competition for our most valuable asset: time.

How do you manage your time in social media?

These are the slides from the presentation (with a few enhancements I made to them thanks to the feedback I got from participants). You can download the presentation if you prefer watching it offline.

• You may see a greater number of donations with a smaller average gift size.
• As much as the media talks of a possible economic rebound, prospective supporters will still be wary of donating to new causes.
• Email outreach will continue its upward trend, meaning more email in subscribers’ in-boxes.
• Recurring gifts will be a huge portion of online giving.
• As in the past, year-end gifts will account for a substantial percentage of total annual contributions.

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The event also served as a “send-off” for Assemblywoman Skinner as she heads to Copenhagen, Denmark this week for the 2009 United Nations Convention on Climate Change. This conference brings together 192 countries and 100 heads of state or government in negotiations to deal with the growing threats posed by global warming. Assemblywoman Skinner will represent California alongside State Senator Fran Pavely and other state leaders, and will speak about her energy efficiency legislation and California policies. She will also interact with the University of California delegation that is attending the conference to provide expert testimony through panel discussions.

Recognized as the California Assembly’s 2009 Rookie of the Year, Nancy authored landmark legislation this past year, including bills that will give foster youth better access to college housing, (AB 1393), make AC Transit buses more bike friendly (AB 652), and bring thousands of energy efficient jobs to California (AB758).

The Madera Group congratulates Assemblywoman Skinner for all of her achievements in 2009, and wishes her a victorious 2010!

Photo: CPUC Commissioner Dian Gruenich, Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, and Janice Lin from Stratgen Consulting
Photo Credit: Erik Johnson

Sitting down to read the San Francisco Chronicle one April morning, an article caught his attention.  According to an international commission base in the Netherlands, after years of delay and obfuscation, German insurance companies would be releasing the names of 363,232 German Jews who had bought insurance policies before or during the Hitler era.

Although Gil and his immediate family left Germany for the United States in 1936, the wider family, those that escaped the Holocaust, were scattered all over the globe.  Now, 67 years later, Gil decided to check for family members on the commission’s web site.  Discovering the names of three of his four grandparents, he unloaded the lengthy claims application forms. Before filing the forms, however, Gil spent weeks drawing family trees and researching the names and addresses of his still-living his relatives, many of whom he had never met but were potential heirs.

Still, Gil had some hesitation about pursuing the matter.  “I had put Germany behind me long ago,” he says.  “I didn’t want to have anything to do with them.  I didn’t want their money, but I didn’t want the thieves to get away with robbing the corpses of my relatives.”

Several months later, a German insurance firm informed him that his father had taken out a life insurance policy in 1930 and, in due time, thousands of dollars arrived for Gil to share with his sister.  Then, the commission sent Gil $1,000 to thank him for his efforts.  It didn’t stop there.  By 2005, thousands more arrived after another insurance company discovered a policy his father had taken out in 1927.

Yet, something didn’t feel right.  Gil realized that he’d started on this path because the process seemed like a chance to find closure.  “There are at least two new generations of Germans,” he says, “and most of them have made a sincere effort to deal with the sins of their fathers.”  Despite this understanding, he couldn’t ignore knowing that extreme suffering still exists throughout the world.  “Maybe I could have found closure if it hadn’t been for Cambodia…and Rwanda, Bosnia and now Darfur…Purgatory will not end in the near future.  We’re a flawed species.”

Rather than keep the German money, Gil gave it to the American Civil Liberties Foundation, an organization protecting human rights. In addition, he added the tax benefit he would have received in income tax reductions to his donation as well.

Gil says that his motivation to give comes from the realization that, long after his personal experience of the Nazi era, genocide and war still plague the world, not to mention hunger and pandemics.  It is that understanding that compels Gil to keep giving each year.  Last year, he made donations to over 20 charitable organizations and political campaigns.  Gil’s actions remind us that, whether large or small, there’s value in all of our giving this season.

Here’s her list of ten tools and strategies:

1. RSS Feeds
2. Use the Add This widget
3. Pick Two Social Networks
4. URL Shorteners
5. Care2’s Petition Site
6. Google Grants
7. YouTube Nonprofit Program
8. Listservs
9. Create widgets to share content or actions
10. FreeCause Toolbar

Read the detailed article after the jump

Matt mentions several nonprofits that are seeing good results with mobile advocacy, such as American Federation of Teachers, The Humane Society of the United States, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights. For example, “NCLR had a lot of success tweeting out messages asking people to text “nclr to 69866” to sign up to get the California Supreme Court’s ruling on Prop 8 via SMS the moment it was ruled upon. The advantage of the SMS is that, like your email list, you can then own the data on your list, you can segment your list, and you can start building a relationship with individuals who have opted-in to your list.”

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Success in social marketing and fundraising means making our clients visible in a crowded online marketplace. Our agency works with clients to develop a strategy that not only uses social networks, but also persuades others to pass the word on. That means creating inspiring and thoughtful messages that work for both email inboxes and social networking sites. It means telling a story that communicates the meaning of the work we are describing, and showing the results that come from it.

The desired goal is to have the public, or the media, pick up a story and carry it even further — a bonus that is the reward for hard work and creative thinking.

Even better, is when an agency partners with a once-in-a-lifetime client who needs no introduction to the social marketplace — in our case, President Bill Clinton and his foundation, the William J. Clinton Foundation. On August 19th, President Clinton celebrated his 63rd birthday. To celebrate, The Madera Group collaborated with his foundation staff to launch an online birthday card fundraising campaign with the culminating message sent by his beloved friend Nelson Mandela.

By the way, it is not too late to send President Clinton a birthday wish and make a donation.

Happy Birthday President Clinton! We thank you and your foundation for all that you are doing around the world to fight climate change, eliminate childhood obesity, and give access to HIV/AIDS medicines to millions of people. Your work is an inspiration to us all.