The Electronic Engagement Blog

I’m an “n” of one, and possibly a Pollyana (which is not a bad thing, at least as the term was originally defined), but it appears to me that people are connecting for good more than ever.

Charitable giving rose from $250B in 2004 to $260B in 2005 to $295B in 2006 (Source: GivingUSA Foundation). A recent Kiplinger’s Magazine was all about Green Investing. GOOD magazine will publish it’s second anniversary issue in a few months. And take a look at what’s been going on in your grocery store.

Peter Drucker always liked nonprofits because they had to do more with less. Last October was one example. October was Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and nowhere was this more obvious than at your local grocer. The Susan G. Komen Foundation or, as it is now known, “Komen for the Cure” enlisted General Mills and many other sponsors to surround and engage shoppers with. well, breast cancer awareness.

It was physically everywhere: I remember being in the checkout line, seeing pink-bannered “DVDs for the Cure.” I bought English Muffins for the Cure. My bank had Money for The Cure. Seeing tons of facings in tons of places, I was impressed with both the scope and the coordination of the effort.

I was thinking about this yesterday as I was doing some work with a nonprofit group and wondered, how can the reach be extended electronically?

Sure, this group sends emails and has an eNewsletter and a web site that accepts online donations and all the usual stuff, but what other possibilities are there? Would they benefit from a Facebook page? Should they be using twitter? Developing their own social networking app? Be going mobile?

As we press forward into an increasingly connected world with the attendant rise in noise level, how do nonprofits compete effectively for share of voice, share of wallet and share of mind?

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A million years ago (well, 1978) I was at the Museum of Modern Art in New York enjoying an exhibition put together by then-curator John Szarkowski entitled “Mirrors and Windows.” The thesis of the exhibition was that photography was either a mirror of what was around the photographer or a window into the photographer’s or subject’s reality or worldview. It was an extraordinary exhibition of some of the greatest photographs by some of the greatest photographers (Dorthea Lange, Gene Smith, Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander; you get the idea).

As I check popurls every morning (one of my morning rituals), I’m always a little taken aback by some of the images on the flickr feed. Many are very good photographs, but the thing that often strikes me is how intimate some of them are, and I’m not speaking just conceptually. Some of them are almost exhibitionistic; many are striking windows into a person’s life. Which makes me wonder: is this part of electronic engagement good or bad? And (I’m almost ashamed to admit this) the marketer in me wonders if there’s any part of this that impacts marketing? Is it too private? Or are these people who really want to share bits of themselves with the world and would be happy to be points of marketing foci? Are these the iJustine’s of the world and are doing it for art? Or are they doing it for attention? And then, how far away is the idea of doing it for commerce (and Justine, for example, may be all of the above.)

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