Mark and Kelli (Chris, too)

We have added a text area question to our applications:

"If your organization or this specific project is using any social media tools in addition to your standard website, please list them below (example: share the link to a facebook page or youtube channel, share your user id on twitter or plurk)

The use of social media is not a requirement for potential grantees but is helpful for our staff to know."

I like having the question on the application and feel that this is more broad and open than if we put it in the organization information as one field. This way, they can put several different responses rather than be limited to just one. All this to say, I like incorporating social media but don't think I would want it in the profile informaiton.

We also use social media quite extensively. We follow grantees and share resources via our FB and Twitter profiles. For us collecting the grantees SM handles would be used to make sure that we are following all of our groups. Right now we are following most of the active orgs and hadn't thought about incorporating a SM question into our grant proces. Something that we would consider and find useful if made available. But not critical for our needs.

Kelli

BTW, follow us @TheSimmonsFdn on FB and Twitter :)

posted September 4, 2013 by Kelli King-Jackson, The Simmons Foundation

Chris,

Thanks for your reply.

I've added a text field for Twitter and URL field for an organization's facebook page in my LOI.

I find that as organizations increasingly migrate to social media to communicate to their constituencies, that having their 'official' (ie not personal) IDs is helpful and a different sort of access point to the organization than a website or official correspondence. I use SM as an early part of my due diligence to understand an organization's priorities and tone better. Following them via SM also then encourages them to follow our foundation where we attempt to communicate our priorities and tone - it brings a whole new level of engagement.

Mark

posted August 21, 2013 by Mark Petersen, Bridgeway Foundation

Hi Mark,

Welcome to the club :-)

I appreciate you chiming in - collecting social media IDs within GLM is not something I've heard mentioned before, but I certainly recognize that social media plays a big role for some clients.

Do you see more value in capturing IDs for individuals or IDs for the non-profit organization? And what is your vision for interacting (i.e. outside of Foundant GLM or within the system)?

To be honest, given other priorities, I don't see working on this any time soon, but I definitely would appreciate hearing more about your thoughts on it. Simply collecting the IDs wouldn't be that technically difficult, but I'd also like to hear from other clients to help get a feel for the potential pro's and con's.

Thanks again for taking time to post here,

-chris

posted August 18, 2013 by Chris Dahl, Foundant Technologies