The United Nations Joint Inspection Body recently spoke to web professional in 40 UN agencies to identify what the most common problems are and how to fixed them. The result is an impressive document that can be used by many non-profit organizations, NGOs, International Organizations and even government ministries and agencies to address similar problems in their own organization. The ”Review of Management of Internet Websites in the United Nations System Organizations“ (31 pages) focuses on website governance and strategy – and I still[...]
Archive for the ‘Strategy’ Category
Update (4 November 2009): the Social media guidelines have been approved. Two month ago I wrote that I had started to create social media staff guidelines for my organization. Here is a short update: Since my last post, I spoke to all relevant stakeholders in the organization. In my case these were the Communications Department, Human Resources, the Staff Association, the Security Unit, IT, the Legal Unit. I also met with both the Undersecretary General and the Director who oversee these[...]
My organization is currently working on a major web relaunch: we are moving our public facing website and our two extranets to a CMS and will give them a new, similar look and feel. In a series of articles I will describe what I have learned during the process. This is the first part. Lesson learned: Don’t split the contracts for the design-part and the technical implementation! If I could go back in time and do one thing differently, this would[...]
Seth Godin recently wrote a post titled “The problem with non” in which he claims that non-profit organizations fail at social media adoption and that the reason for that is fear of change. Here are six reasons why I disagree: 1. There is a difference Oprah and an NGO „Take a look at the top 100 twitter users in terms of followers. (…)None of them are non-profits. (…) Is the work you’re doing not important enough to follow, or is it[...]
A few days ago I came across a remarkable TED talk that gives some interesting insights into why non-profit organizations might be the best employers you can find. It also got me thinking about whether we are asking the wrong people for advice, if we are inviting the McKinsey’s and KMPG’s of this world to assist us with our problems. I highly recommend you watch the video before you read on: What I find most interesting about this presentation is[...]
I’ve just been reading Ken Burbary’s blog and came across an excellent story from Scott Monty. I think it’s a beauty in itself and doesn’t need any additional commentary: “A friend sent me a PDF of an article from a business journal in which a company expressed reservations about this new technology over which everyone seemed to be abuzz. They decided that they would restrict employees’ use of it, because of the fear of corporate secrets getting out, of insider[...]
Last week I gave a presentation at the IFRC’s communications managers meeting about social media in general and how we should use it. Below you find the largest part of that presentation. I removed the bits that were focusing very much on internal processes and steps that need to be taken in-house in order to make social media work. (Red Cross Red Crescent volunteers and staff can download the complete presentation from FedNet, the IFRC’s extranet.) I hope you like it.[...]
I just discovered that, the day after I posted “We are not funny – why nonprofits suck at being viral”, Mashable’s Josh Catone published “Top 10 YouTube Videos for Social Good”. This is a great list and I really recommend that you watch all of them for inspiration. While I don’t want to duplicate what he has already done, here are my top three – and my two cents for each of them: Because we are all connected I think this[...]
