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

Presented by the David Brower Center
with International Rivers and the Madera Group

Thursday June 10
Panel Discussion: 6:30 – 7:30 p.m.,
in the Goldman Theater
Opening Reception: 7:30 – 9:00 p.m.,
in the Hazel Wolf Gallery

Artists and Activists: A Dialogue about Water and Human Rights

Photographers Robert Dawson and Roberto Bear Guerra – both featured in the exhibition – will discuss the artist’s experience and unique role in highlighting the connection between rivers, dams and human rights. They will be joined by Steve Rothert, California Director of American Rivers, and Aviva Imhof, Campaigns Director of International Rivers, activists on the front lines of the struggle for healthy rivers and human rights in California and around the world. This conversation will be moderated by Patrick McCully, Executive Director of International Rivers.

Then join us for a public reception to celebrate the opening of Water, Rivers and People / Agua, Ríos y Pueblos, a photographic homage to those who fight to defend rivers and the people who depend on them. With striking imagery by celebrated photographers, the exhibition charts inspiring examples of rivers that have been protected by citizen action, as well as community-led efforts to provide water for people in affordable, sustainable and effective ways.

Both opening events are free and open to the public. To RSVP, click here.
For more information on the exhibition, visit Upcoming Exhibition.

If you’ll accept that Convio customers are larger in size and better financed than the average nonprofit, then this annual study provides a useful source for online benchmarks such as average online gift sizes, online fundraising response rates, email list growth, website traffic, and much more.

Here are the key findings for 2009:

• Online giving grew 14 percent despite a difficult economy. Overall, 69 percent of organizations raised more in 2009 than 2008, while 31 percent saw declines in their online fundraising.
• Donors were still giving, but giving smaller amounts. 61 percent of all organizations saw their average gift drop in 2009.
• The average online gift was $80.81, with higher giving reported for disaster fundraising. For those calculating return on investment for list growth, the online revenue per usable email address in 2009 was $11.68.
• Small organizations grew fastest. Organizations with fewer than 10,000 email addresses on file grew online revenue by 26 percent, and gifts by 32 percent.
• Email files continued to grow strongly. The total email file grew 27 percent in 2009 to 39,100 constituents.
• The open rate for email fundraising appeals was 19%.  The click-through rate was 1.7%, down from 2% in 2008.  The overall performance of online fundraising appeals was 0.15%, a slight rise from the year before.
• Web traffic growth continued for most, but at a slower rate. 60 percent of organizations grew their website traffic from 2008 to 2009. Web traffic growth in 2009 was in the single digits at 6 percent compared with double digit growth seen in previous years.
• Web traffic was strongly correlated with email file growth. 38 percent of an organization’s success building large email files could be directly attributed to the amount of traffic to the organization’s website.
• Registration rates dropped. The rate at which organizations converted website visitors to their email file declined to 2.12 percent in 2009.
• Constituents were more reluctant to open emails and click-through. While open rates for both fundraising appeals and newsletters remained around 20 percent, the click-through rates for both types of online communication declined in 2009.
• About 7% of online activists also donated money online to the organization they took action with.  Conversely, 8% of online donors also took an online advocacy action with the same organization.

This annual review by Convio is a useful compendium of benchmarks, although I advise organizations to not feel too locked in by these average results.  More than anything they provide a useful look into how digital fundraising is evolving, particularly at a time when electronic tools are changing rapidly and the economy is having an impact on giving.  Missing from Convio’s annual reports are the still murky impact of online social media and mobile messaging on fundraising, along with changing attitudes towards paper-based direct mail.

Download the Convio Benchmarks Report

Today, I read a great blog post that made me realize that I have been missing a very important dimension about slacktivism. It’s not just about people being too lazy (though there sure is some of that involved): there’s an element of acknowledging the fragmented attention span (and wallet depth) that most people have these days. As a result, if you can engage millions of people for a short period of time and get them to sign a petition (and pass it along to tens of others) or have millions of people to TEXT a $10 donation, you CAN make millions of otherwise seemingly pointless contributions VERY meaningful.

But “The Art of Activating Slacktivism” by Kari Dunn Saratovsky goes one step further. He introduces the “teach a man how to fish” concept:
“Nonprofits spend too much time trying to figure out how to use social media tools to entice new donors to give them $10, when they should be figuring out how to empower their existing donors to leverage social media tools to raise money for them.”

How do you see yourself empowering slacktivists to further your cause?

Don’t worry: you are not alone in having questions about this new service in the social media landscape! To help you figure out what to do about Google Buzz, make sure to read this great post about the role of Google Buzz for nonprofits by John Haydon.

These highlights stand out:

• 400,000 people have made at least one donation
• $25 median donation amount
• 35,000 causes have received at least one donation
• $2.1 million raised by 2009 America’s Giving Challenge participants
• $4.5 million raised through the Birthday Wish feature

Read more about how Facebook Causes helps nonprofits with fundraising.

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.

• Online revenue grew by 46% in 2009 compared to 2008.
• The two largest months for online giving were December and May.
• The final three months of the year represent the largest amount of online giving to nonprofit organizations.
• In 2009, 46% of online revenue was processed during October, November, and December.
• The month of December accounted for 30% of revenue and 18% of the transaction volume.
• The average online gift in December 2009 was $244.17.
• The average online gift in 2009 was $144.72. This represents a 5% decline from 2008, but remains significantly higher than other fundraising channels.

Read the full article