I was wondering what was taking so long. This week a group of brokers and traders started their own advocacy group to stick up for Wall Street. The nonpartisan group can be found at restorewallstreet.com. The CEO of John Thomas Financial, a fairly new investment house, is the head advocate of this rallying cry. At this week’s first meeting, CEO Thomas Belesis said that he formed the group to counter “the repeating, relentless attacks on Wall Street.” The tag line under Restore Wall Street on the web site is “putting the pride back into Wall Street.” This is a group to watch, just as the Tea-Baggers were months ago. I think that Wall Streeters have had enough of the name-calling and are smartly adopting similar counter-insurgency tactics as their critics. Stay tuned.
Tags: John Thomas Financial, restorewallstreet.com, Wall Street
In today’s Sunday The New York Times, the U2 singer Bono writes an opinion piece on Rebranding America. For those still scratching their heads about President Obama’s recent honor as a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, this article provides insight into America’s renewed reputation in the world and President’s Obama’s role in that shift. As a non-American, Bono explains:
“But I will venture to say that in the farthest corners of the globe, the president’s words are more than a pop song people want to hear on the radio. They are lifelines.
In dangerous, clangorous times, the idea of America rings like a bell (see King, M. L., Jr., and Dylan, Bob). It hits a high note and sustains it without wearing on your nerves. (If only we all could.) This was the melody line of the Marshall Plan and it’s resonating again. Why? Because the world sees that America might just hold the keys to solving the three greatest threats we face on this planet: extreme poverty, extreme ideology and extreme climate change. The world senses that America, with renewed global support, might be better placed to defeat this axis of extremism with a new model of foreign policy.”
What was revealing to me was how Bono is described in the footer where the author’s bio and background are set forth in what seems like less than 140 characters. It says: “Bono, the lead singer of the band U2 and a co-founder of the advocacy group ONE and (Product)RED, is a contributing columnist for The Times.” This being a blog all about advocacy, Bono’s ONE organization is breezily identified as an advocacy group. Today it seems fairly common to describe groups organized around causes or issues as advocacy groups whereas years ago they might have been described as non-profits or NGOs…non-governmental groups. Worth noting how times have changed along with our descriptors.
Tags: advocacy group, America reputation, Bono, NGO
I found myself landing on a new site called Justmeans. It has an interesting premise which is that companies can subscribe and communicate with those interested in their good work. Companies who join use Justmeans’ distribution service to syndicate their work to various social networks. They have an impressive array of clients such as HP, Seventh Generation, Timberland, Financial Times, Best Buy, Intel, Accion, Campbell Soup (disclosure: some are clients although I learned about this site through my son who is involved with Starting Bloc). I was able to find out about what different companies are doing in the responsibility space all on one site. Since I am always interested in new conferences, I learned that Justmeans and the FT are organizing summits and have two coming up in NY this fall. For companies looking to reach advocates, it is an interesting way to communicate with those that matter. Check it out. I am going to follow some companies’ twitters through justmeans and see how it goes.
Tags: advocates, CSR, Financial Times, Justmeans, starting bloc
Big shout out to Chris Brogan, Justin Levy and all the folks here at Inbound Marketing Summit in Dallas. Just finished my presentation on how Advocacy and Badvocacy are impacting marketing, and the various apple carts that are being upset in the process. For those who can’t make it, you can watch the proceedings live here or join us at the Boston event late September. Here’s my deck, BTW — would love your feedback…
IMS09 Dallas: Advocacy, Badvocacy & Upsetting Apple Carts
Weber Shandwick recently published The Good Book of Badvocacy, the first in a series of Thought Leadership “mini-books.” As you might have guessed, The Good Book is all about badvocacy. Take a look and let us know what you think!
Advocacy is booming. Non-profits currently comprise 11% of the U.S. workforce according to The Quiet Crisis report. In fact, non-profits contribute to nearly 5% of our GDP and if were a country, the nonprofit sector would rank as the seventh largest economy in the world. More people are joining causes and volunteering although clearly the economy has had an enormous impact. However, according to the Economist, Americorps (a widely regarded one year volunteer initiative) saw a rise in applications before the economic crisis even struck. Also, New York’s public service site (www.volunteerNYC.org) saw a 27% increase since one year ago. The good news is that the passage of the Ed Kennedy Serve America Act is creating even more opportunities for national service advocates than ever before.
Tags: Advocacy, Americorps, Economist, Ed Kennedy Serve America, Non-profit, Quiet Crisis, volunteerNYC.org
The Obama stimulus plan is looking for advocates. An email was sent to hosts of stimulus plan parties seeking support and info on explaining the bill. New DNC chairman Tim Kaine is videoed urging support and instructions on how to achieve that: “Don’t forget to gather stories and questions from your guests — they will be featured on BarackObama.com to tell the story of the economic crisis, and our recovery.” Advocacy is all about telling stories and sharing them– much like Obama has done. Kaine also answers questions from ordinary people in his 13 minutes on video. I received a 4 minute video from President Obama this morning asking me to advocate the plan and explaining why he needs my support. [Where does he find the time? Does he sleep?]As soon as the plan is passed, www.recovery.gov goes live and we can see how our money is being spent and is meeting its objectives. Advocacy has never been so viral, so social and so immediate.
Tags: Advocacy, advocates, Kaine, Obama, Stimulus plan
I noticed a new igoogle application that caught my interest. In addition to designing your home page with a whole host of designs, now igoogle has cause-related themes or your favorite advocacy group. The user can choose from a variety of looks…Rainforest Action Alliance, Sierra Club, Alliance for Climate Protection, WWF, Clean Cool-Air Planet, Doctors without Borders, Room to Read, etc. It is very cool and glad to see how mainstream advocacy has become. There are about 40 themes and the most popular so far is WWF, as seen above. Check it out.
Tags: Advocacy, cause-related, igoogle
With the global economy in crisis and consumer confidence down, it’s no surprise that charities and non-profits are concerned about their viability. I came across some sobering statistics…
- The Red Cross is suffering a 30% drop in responses and contributions from new donors, and corporate donations coming in at lower amounts.
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Catholic Charities USA reports that January-October 2008 contributions fell to $7.6 million, down 4% from the same period in 2007.
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The Meals on Wheels Association of America says roughly two-thirds of its members recently reported drops in both corporate and individual donations and some regional programs were forced to close down in 2008.
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Just under half the 1,200 owner-managers polled by U.K. accountancy firm Tenon said that supporting their local community was important to their business, down from 71 per cent that said it was in 2007.
If they aren’t already, charitable organizations should be tapping into their advocates. Weber Shandwick’s global survey, the New Wave of Advocacy conducted with KRC Research, revealed compelling reasons why such organizations should harness the power of “issue or cause advocates.”
First, they are a small but influential segment – nearly 1 in 5 global adults (18%) say they have actively supported an issue or cause in the past two years but they in turn encourage 26 other people, on average, to join in their support. Aside from any financial support, they demonstrate their support by wearing something that displays their cause (27%), sending letters to a company or elected official regarding their cause (21%), and posting comments of support online (20%). Further, when they are given the opportunity to react to a request for support, they do so quickly: 47% take less than one day to act and most (88%) don’t need more than a few weeks to get engaged.
Not surprisingly, broadcast and print media do the most to shape an advocate’s opinion about an issue or cause, but appeals from friends, family and coworkers are by far the most effective for triggering support action. Which brings us to why it’s so critical, now more than ever, for charities, non-profits and philanthropies to engage in advocate-building. Take, for example, the March of Dimes which provides its supporters with a step-by-stop guide for recruiting others to walk and join their cause. A simple bullet-point set of tips demonstrates how basic an advocacy program can be.
For all those advocates of knowledge, the founder of wikipedia is asking for some help. Unusual from them but for a good cause. Read below.
Dear Reader,
Today I am going to ask you to support Wikipedia with a donation. This might sound unusual: Why does one of the world’s five most popular web properties ask for financial support from its users?
Wikipedia is built differently from almost every other top 50 website. We have a small number of paid staff, just twenty-three. Wikipedia content is free to use by anyone for any purpose. Our annual expenses are less than six million dollars. Wikipedia is run by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, which I founded in 2003.
At its core, Wikipedia is driven by a global community of more than 150,000 volunteers - all dedicated to sharing knowledge freely. Over almost eight years, these volunteers have contributed more than 11 million articles in 265 languages. More than 275 million people come to our website every month to access information, free of charge and free of advertising.
But Wikipedia is more than a website. We share a common cause: Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s our commitment.
Your donation helps us in several ways. Most importantly, you will help us cover the increasing cost of managing global traffic to one of the most popular websites on the Internet. Funds also help us improve the software that runs Wikipedia — making it easier to search, easier to read, and easier to write for. We are committed to growing the free knowledge movement world-wide, by recruiting new volunteers, and building strategic partnerships with institutions of culture and learning.
Wikipedia is different. It’s the largest encyclopedia in history, written by volunteers. Like a national park or a school, we don’t believe advertising should have a place in Wikipedia. We want to keep it free and strong, but we need the support of thousands of people like you.
I invite you to join us: Your donation will help keep Wikipedia free for the whole world.
Thank you,
Jimmy Wales
DONATE NOW »
Tags: advocates, wikipedia
