Philanthropists and Nonprofits: 3 Actions to Advance Social Justice

Surprising and unpredictable political changes demand fast and decisive actions from advocacy groups and the funders that support them. As I struggle with this in my own nonprofit, I wanted to share three actions, synthesized from two points of view, that you can take to quickly respond to the challenges of these uncertain times.

David Karpf is the author of Step 1 for Effective Advocacy in the Age of Trump: Learn to Listen Better, published by Nonprofit Quarterly. Karpf champions better listening to help navigate in an unpredictable and chaotic political sea, but what does better listening mean? Improve and expand your social media analytics, experiment with A/B testing to tweak messages, but make sure to mix in active listening tools like discussion forums, surveys and stakeholder engagement to build a culture of commitment and circumvent possible bias and limits of data analytics.

The successful advocacy groups, suggests Karpf, are those that can generate social clicks as well as supporter strength and gravitas.

By Jeffthechimp (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons  

The National Committee For Responsive Philanthropy, (NCRP) published a direct appeal to other grant makers in their website, Philanthropy: Silence is not anacceptable response to Trump’s orders on immigrants and refugees. The NCRP joined with Grantmakers Concernedwith Immigrants and Refugees calling on funders to take a stand against President Trump’s executive orders on immigrants and refugees, but they were disheartened to find silence among some of their fellow philanthropists. NCRP’s appeal offered to help grant makers overcome fear, workload or inertia with ideas on flexible funding with an emphasis on facilitating action by their grantees instead of overhead percentages and onerous paper work.

If you are a grant maker or a grantee, you can incorporate the three actions below, synthesized from the perspectives of grant maker and grantee, to build your rapid action responses:

·       Listen Better – Mix passive listening, like social analytics, with old school conversations and engagements to fuse passive social media clicks with active supporter strength.

·       Test and Experiment – When the rules change, experiment with new tactics, test their effectiveness, measure engagement, adapt and learn.

·       Take Action Now – In times of crisis, funders and grantees can work together to prioritize action.

A responsive philanthropy coupled with active nonprofits can be a powerful force for social good, but only if you can take timely action when needed.

My name is Karen Conner, an experienced nonprofit professional and candidate for Social Media Marketing certificate at NorthwesternUniversity on Coursera. Please contact me at @klconner.