The infrastructure hasn’t caught up to our laziness.
We’ve so lowered the bar for participation in movements for social change that people are able to feel like they’ve done good without ever doing anything at all.
Clicking retweet, or becoming a Fan of a cause on Facebook. These small, inconsequential actions are letting people feel like they’ve done a good deed, and may, in fact, keep them from actually doing something. By stating their intentions of good they’ve made themselves less likely to actually do something.
However, we can’t assume that people will identify their own inaction and immediately seek to do more. Some will, surely, just as a certain fraction of any group will always do more than the rest (in fact, this small fraction will do more than all the rest combined. A predictable imbalance).
The problem, though, is what we count as “doing.” If this small group begins to feel like they’ve satisfied their need to do by doing almost nothing, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot. We’re allowing those likely to take action to be satisfied with inaction. When publicly joining a Facebook group or retweeting something about a particular cause in an effort to be conspicuously compassionate is seen as doing enough we do far more harm than good.
What, then, are we left with? A generation of conspicuously compassionate, “passionate” people who accomplish nothing.
We need to raise the bar for participation. We need to insist that you don’t get to feel like you’ve done good unless you’ve actually done something. We need to make it clear that you’re not part of a movement or taking action unless you’ve left your chair or opened your wallet.
And we need the infrastructure to catch up to our laziness. We need more campaigns that allow us to send a text message to a cause that charges money to our phone bills. We need to be able to send small amounts of money by retweeting or clicking Join Group.
The problem with sending a text message is that, unless you tell your friends about it, no one knows. We want others to see our crocodile tears, our tweets and retweets. We want others to see how much we “care.” That’s okay, it should just cost you money. By signing up to a service just once, you should be able to have your credit card charged whenever you tweet about specific causes or append them with a hashtag.
Make it as simple to actually help a cause as it is to pretend to care.
Until the infrastructure catches up to our laziness and the bar for participation is raised, social media has not done as much good for social change as we’d like to pretend.
Update:
My friend Darrin alerted me to this article about Twitpay, whose version 2.0 allows users to have their accounts charged when they retweet a not-for-profit’s messages. A great step toward toward reducing the friction of giving.
Twitpay 2.0, if you will, processes the financial transaction using a proprietary payment system. Charities post—or “tweet”—a request for donations. To make a payment, the donor reposts—or retweets—that message. Doing so authenticates a transfer of money from the donor’s account to the nonprofit’s.
The retweeting function not only reduces friction in the giving process, it helps promote the cause and spreads the message across Twitter.
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Agree with you nearly 100%. While I commend companies for encourage text-to-donate campaigns, there is nothing more powerful than the actual participation in service.
I spent two days stocking semi-trucks with goods to help those in need after Hurricane Katrina. It wasn’t because I would have rather sent a text, but because my company was providing the truck and no one else volunteered their service.
The first car that pulled up to donate water and food was amazing…but to be in that truck for 6 hours STRAIGHT in the heat and humidity of summer, with a seemingly unending sea of donations coming in…that was something to see!
We need to remember that just because we can donate cash, doesn’t mean that’s all we need to do. Sometimes a little sweat equity goes further than any text donation ever will!
Very true, Dave! As I said in my last video post, doing things that take effort… does more.
This is quite true, though I’m not convinced that it’s intentional! When infrastructure catches up, perhaps it will become more easy to donate to your favourite or latest cause. Who doesn’t buy a Tim Horton’s cookie on send a kid to camp day? I would say most do because it’s easy. We have gotten a little lazy. If we have to register and provide credit card info…and sign up for yet another password, how many of us are as likely to give in that way. We have become lazier or may be just busier. Either way, the good that we would like to do doesn’t always match what we would actually do. I would also add that we have become used to getting a lot for free. We join entire networks and get free information from diet advice, marketing advice, to the occasional medical diagnosis even! I wonder how many of us would pay to join a group for a good cause? Or would we procrastinate there too? I would like to think not. But maybe? I would love to know how successful the text for Haiti campaign went. Easy campaigns like that seem to have the potential to do good.
Dave, I agree, getting your hands dirty pays in huge dividends to the giver as much as the receiver! It’s great to get offline sometimes too!
Yeah, exactly, Cynthia. The easier we make this, the better we’ll do. But it’s become accepted that talking is enough. Which is no good.
On the wallet side of things, you may be interested in Flattr: http://flattr.com/
Created by the founder of the Pirate Bay, of all people, it’s meant to be an easy way for people to pay a flat rate and share to many.
Very cool, I’ll check it out. Thanks!
On the subject of the Haiti text campaigns, you would have been shocked by how many people called in after they received their cell phone bills demanding to have the charges removed. So many people who did this were under the impression that it was either the cell phone companies or the organizers of the campaign that was donating the 3 to 5 dollars, not them. It was an exceptionally successful campaign, but not with a lack of not trying.
The part that concerns me is that I’m not surprised at all…
I apologize if this comes off as hostile, but this is not a statistically compelling argument to me. I understand that stating your intentions often leads to less follow-through, but are there statistics on how that correlates to a net increase or decrease in donations achieved via social networking? I am more concerned about the practical amount of money raised than about how “legit” anyone retweeting/Facebook sharing is in their concern.
Let me ask you this: would you rather have more money raised and a lower percentage of people donating, or less money raised and a higher percentage of people donating? If we can achieve more/higher, I’m all for it. But if I have to take one over the other, I’d probably take the former. It’s true that charities need to catch up with our social networking media, but I would be surprised if it were not generating more donations overall (even if individuals have a lower rate of participation).
That said, I do agree that we (speaking of Americans and presumably Canadians) have a general social obsession with displays of charity. I think it is often polarizing. There are a lot of vocal people out there who ostensibly believe that every act of kindness should be some sort of Markian messianic secret, not to be shared with the world. I was actually quite surprised when I donated to UNICEF and they gave me the option of posting the donation on my Facebook page. Similarly, I generally don’t tell people that I donate my time as a tutor because there’s a social stigma against doing so. I think this trap leads to “safe” displays of support like joining Facebook groups or retweeting links — because if you’re the one person going out of his or her way to pointedly say what you’ve contributed, many people will see you as being ostentatious.
Doesn’t come across as hostile at all, you make fabulous points.
The concern I express is the potential for people who want to help to be satisfied with just talking. The more charities that ask you to tweet or retweet or Fan a page and give you some reward for it (the satisfaction of being conspicuously compassionate), the more I worry that those who may have actually done something now won’t.
This is not currently an entirely statistically defensible worry, I don’t disagree for a second. That sort of data just doesn’t exist (that I’ve been able to find). But I think it’s a legitimate area for discussion at the very least.
Thank you very much for your thoughtful comment!
While txt for donations is a unique fundraising approach that raises dollars from non-traditional donors, it does have drawbacks. The true value in any donor is the life time value (LTV). LTV describes the likely total giving to a charity based on the previous acquisition of donors. While it’s commonly used to calculate a reasonable cost for acquisition, it also informs on the issue of one-time donors. The text and payment through a cell phone bill prevents the charity from learning the identity of the donor. That means the LTV of the donors solicited through this m-Commerce model is $5. Not a significant gain for the charity. A more robust networked approach may have garnered the same initial total and enhanced their database with donors who might contribute $5/month for 3 years for a LTV of $180.
Capturing information that allows a charity to build a relationship with the donor is almost always the best investment for long term growth.
Where social networking/media has been used successfully is US politics. Barrack Obama is usually the success story written about, but I think Howard Dean is the originator.
Howard Dean launched e-Philanthropy in the American political context. He was the darling of the blogging set. While he used the Internet, it was really a grassroots movement that sprung up around him using the tool meetup.com. Howard Dean listened and read his supporters. He responded to their criticisms and comments. He removed any campaign impediments to grassroots activities. Gary Wolf’s article in January 2004 “Wired” connected his early success with five popular Internet axioms:
• Make the network stupid.
• Let the ants do the work.
• Leaders are places.
• Links attract links.
• Allow the ends to connect.
Make the network stupid was the campaigns approach to not optimizing supporters for anything in particular. The implications were that the central campaign allowed hundreds of independent groups to function without interference. By focusing on a model where information was pushed out, and results were received, but planning, choices and decisions are at the grass roots level there was nothing to interfere with continuous growth.
Let the ants do the work was the part of the model that allowed those in traditional un-influential states to impact the early campaign. “Because the entire Dean system [was] densely linked, the distant work of all the local groups feeds back into the campaign.” The information that was pushed out from headquarters was enhanced by the mesh of volunteers. Materials were sent among groups. Intensive letter writing campaigns from one part of the country changed the outcome in completely different states.
Leaders are places is an interesting way to describe the welcoming approach of the Dean campaign. In effect, Dean’s run for Presidential-nomination was about providing a way – a place – for others to participate. The ease of participation connected bloggers to other bloggers and influenced outcomes.
Links attract links is a way of describing the value of being online early. It’s hard to play catch-up to someone who has already promoted themselves. Especially hard in a political realm where and early approach wrapped up areas that could have been in play. Add in the Internets tendency to trust sites with more links and a late start can be a recipe for disaster.
Allow the ends to connect is a model of democracy where the community is knit and communicates more with each other than with the leader. The distributed nature of the campaign doesn’t guarantee a volunteer input on policy, but it does open a safe place in which to debate the finer points of the campaign with peers. It turns every supporter into someone who can speak for the candidates, recruit new volunteers and influence the outcome.
Howard Dean’s campaign team pulled together an unprecedented race for an unknown. The Internet was critical to the progress Dean made. But as a long shot, he couldn’t overcome traditional party candidates. What he did was educate an entire group about the potential of the Internet in bringing a candidate to the public’s attention and the Internets potential in generating volunteers.
But there are arguments where social media has been used successful to spark real-world beneficial activity. That’s where the Obama online campaign was incredibly successful.
In summary, you’re right. But only because it’s HARD to get it right.
Wow, thank you so much for that fascinating and thoughtful comment. I really appreciate you taking the time.
I don’t disagree with any of that, and want to make it clear that I don’t believe for a second that social media isn’t useful for social good (my blog talks extensively about the power I believe SM has to promote things and get people to take action). My concern is only that there could be a tendency for online chatter to reduce the likelihood for someone to take real-world action.
I may be unintentionally inflating the danger, but it seems to me to be a legitimate concern and one worth discussing.
So my question continues to be, if people are going to keep chatting in social media, and people are going to continue to want to actually do good, how to we ensure that those who really want to do real, actual good work are helped by social media and not impeded by its low barrier for participation?
I’m a bit passionate about this subject. Writing about it as part of my graduate degree.
One answer is to stop using social media as something to do and start using it as a way to motivate other behaviour.
Don’t move your budget to social media from your offline activities. Use your social media budget to drive more traffic to your offline activities. Do it well.
(Congratulations on being picked up at Brazen Careerist)
Absolutely, Marni. It’s a means to publicize an end, not an end in itself, right?
And thanks!
I like the idea of raising the bar – but I believe it can co-exist with lowering the bar. Allow people to stay connected as easily as we can, then set a higher goal for those who want to do more. The former option wasn’t just there in the early days.