K Street Cafe

Written by Kate Kaye, ClickZ Politics & Advocacy

Political campaigns are stuck on Facebook, and one Washington, D.C.-based digital consultancy aims to help them put engagement on the social site to use in more ways than simply collecting “likes.” Republican agency Engage has developed a set of tools for combining Facebook, social games, and Foursquare-style action-based incentives to driven online and offline activism.

Corporate brands from restaurants to retailers have taken to Foursquare, Gowalla, and other location-based services to capitalize on the check-in fad, awarding consumers with special symbols displaying their visitation prowess, and often with discounts or freebies. Engage’s Multiply product isn’t exactly a check-in service, but it takes a cue from those mobile-centric loyalty programs to build community and inspire activism for door-to-door canvassing, fundraising events, get-out-the-vote efforts, and other key activities driving political campaigns. The tools allow campaigns to attach a system for awarding prize points and badges to their sites, and connect with Facebook’s social graph to encourage sharing among supporters’ social networks.

The notion of awarding incentives to super-supporters is nothing new. The Democratic and Republican parties, as well as individual campaigns often honor their big fundraisers – if not just with cool names and bragging rights, than with parties or other prizes.
The tool helps campaigns track individual volunteer actions, virtual and in-person – from sharing a link on Facebook or donating cash to door-knocking. “The actions that score points and the number of points are flexible from organization to organization,” said Mindy Finn, a partner at Engage. Staffers can make note of who performs a real-world task and upload that information to the system, which in turn awards points. “For example, if there was a phone bank at headquarters, [you could] award 50 points to anyone who attended,” said Finn.

While points and badges are rewards for volunteers, data is the primary reward for campaigns. As the Multiply page on Engage’s site states, “User scores let you target your supporters by likelihood to take action – tied to their phone number, email, and Facebook ID.” The firm is pushing its Data Manager upgrade, which allows campaigns to “collect form data on your site and score every single action or form submission.” Part of the Engage pitch also involves volunteers registering with Multiply.

To read the entire article on ClickZ, click here.

Ten Fallacies About Web Privacy (Wall Street Journal)
Dispelling some common misconceptions about privacy online.

Israelis, Palestinians Expand Mideast Debate to Wikipedia (Tech President)
How Israel and Palestine are expanding their advocacy efforts through social media.

Open for Questions: The End of the Combat Mission in Iraq (YouTube)
Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes addresses questions regarding Iraq from the online community via YouTube.

Blackbaud Social Launches to Help Nonprofits Increase Constituent Engagement through Social Media (MarketWatch)
By integrating with existing fundraising, Internet & constituent relationship management systems, Blackbaud Social allows organizations to drive traffic from popular sites such as Facebook, Twitter & Youtube.

Vote Again 2010: Why You Should Hit The Polls
(The Huffington Post)
A coalition of over 30 youth organizations and media partners combine to encourage Gen Y to hit the polls through social media.

The Education of ‘Mosque’-Tweeter Oz Sultan
(Capital New York)
A look inside the social media surrounding the controversial Park51 mosque project.

In a Crisis, Social Media are Popular Options (CNN Blog)
More people are turning to Facebook and Twitter for information and help in times of need.

Kicking Up Our Action Efforts: Email List (Daily Kos)
Daily Kos launches email activism program, aiming to become an “activist powerhouse.”

Don Draper’s View on Focus Groups: Ignore Them
(PR Week)
Do focus groups give a true portrayal of audience reaction to a new idea?

Originally published on PMPU.org.

Clay Johnson, formerly of the Sunlight Foundation, wrote in his blog recently that “online petitions are a sham.”  He even used some of our data about congressional mail volumes to help make his point.  While I think that he makes some really keen observations and puts his finger on some of the key challenges, not all online advocacy is the same.

The Congressional Management Foundation has done research with both the senders (citizens) and the receivers (congressional offices) and majorities of both believe that advocacy campaigns are good for our country.  In fact, 73% of internet users who had contacted Congress in the last five years confirmed that they thought advocacy campaigns were good for Democracy.  On the Hill, 53% of the congressional staff that responded to our survey confirmed that even they (the ones on the front lines of helping Members manage communications) thought that advocacy campaigns directed at Congress were a good thing.

What’s more, our survey of internet users found that interest groups played an integral role in how citizens learn about and communicate with Congress.  Citizens join interest groups, visit their websites, and participate in their online petitions to learn about the issues they care about and to take collective action.  However, interest groups need to realize that they occupy a key role in the connection between their activists and the Members of Congress who represent them.  With that role comes responsibility.  On the Hill, congressional staff do not have the tools that they need to quickly distill meaning from the overwhelming volume of communications that they receive on any given day.

Clay is right that there are bad actors that don’t have the facilitation of genuine dialogue as their primary motivation.  However, we can’t let a minority of interest groups negate the critical and valuable—both to citizens and Congress—role that interest groups and grassroots advocates play.  He’s also right that there are currently some significant obstacles to meaningful communication.

It is specifically because there are these challenges, that we recently launched The Partnership For a More Perfect Union to help improve the relationship and communication between citizens and Members of Congress.  Through the Communicating with Congress Project we are seeking ways to improve the channel of communication between citizens and their elected officials because it’s good for citizens, Members, and democracy.

By Erica L. Fitzsimmons

A few more thoughts on the new Facebook changes, privacy concerns and what Four Square and Gowalla should be concerned about.

The recent Facebook platform changes may have advantages for advocacy professionals as I discussed in my earlier post, “Facebook Takeover,” but due to widespread privacy concerns, several Facebook members are thinking about quitting the wildly popular social networking site.  And by several, I mean approximately 60% of them — according to a survey conducted by IT security firm, Sophos.
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The state of Maryland, the attorney general of Pennsylvania and a group of researchers are taking on political campaigns using social media platforms.

Maryland’s State Board of Elections is submitting a proposal on June 3 requiring candidates to include standard language on their Facebook pages and their associations with these campaigns. In addition, the proposal would require candidates to create a system of authenticated official Twitter accounts. If this proposal passes, regulation could begin as early as this year.
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This guest post comes from Ellie Brown, a graduate student at American University studying internet advocacy campaigns and blogging at the Daily Social.

Well what do you know? Nestlé listened. Following a two month Greenpeace assault on palm oil purchasing practices of the food giant, Nestlé announced earlier this week that they will stop purchasing palm oil (used in many popular products like Kit Kats) from companies that own “high-risk” plantations and farms. These high-risk plantations are accused of driving the destruction of natural habitats for animals like the orangutan. The new “zero-deforestation” policy is in partnership with The Forest Trust that will work with Nestlé to amend its palm oil purchasing policies.

Nestlé’s decision comes after a tumultuous 8-weeks in which Greenpeace released a provocative video on YouTube to raise awareness of Nestlé’s questionable methods for acquiring palm oil. The video, which likens eating a Kit Kat to eating an orangutan, was subsequently removed by Nestlé; an action that spurred an even greater backlash from the Greenpeace community who bombarded Nestlé with calls, emails and Facebook page comments. Now enter social media “meltdown” as Nestlé representatives responded to Facebook comments with mild requests for users to stop using altered versions of the Nestlé logo as their Facebook profile picture or risk their comments being taken down. Needless to say, users were not happy with this restriction of their right to publicly protest on an open forum like a company’s Facebook page and the comment threads were shared on blogs and news articles across the Internet – directing even more negative attention toward Nestlé.

As a result of the targeted Greenpeace campaign and the added headache of a social media crisis, Nestlé was forced to pay attention and had to address the problems with the palm oil it buys. Hopefully, Nestlé’s new policies will help save some orangutans and make some of us feel better about eating Kit Kats.

Last week The Economist’s Lexington column profiled a community organizer in Seattle who faced a $10,000 fine for not reporting her grassroots efforts to oppose government takeover of private property.

She ran into a second little-known state law. If she prints some fliers, calls some meetings and urges her neighbours to write to their state representative demanding change, she has to register as a “grassroots lobbyist”. This rule applies to any group that spends more than $500 in any given month trying to influence the legislature. That sum includes not only cash but also anything else of value, including voluntary labour, the use of office space and so forth. In other words, it could cover nearly any grassroots group.

In response, she filed a lawsuit to have the law repealed arguing that it would have a chilling effect on free speech.

What do you think? Should every act of grassroots organizing warrant disclosure? At what point does grassroots activity cross a threshold that should trigger registration and transparency regulations?