"Regardless of the changes in technology, the market for well-crafted messages will always have an audience.”

-Steve Burnett

∞ let your message be bold

∞ remember to strive for real world participation and action, despite the presence of an online community

∞ create meaningful relationships with journalists that want to tell a true, meaningful story

∞ build an online community that provides SUPPORT internally against external criticism

∞ never stop engaging

QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF• Do you work in a non-profit organization?• Where does the funding come from for your work?• In what ways does the funding influence how the work gets defined?• How much time do you spend responding to the needs of funders as opposed to the needs of the people you serve?

Fickle Foundations “With the media and financial institutions regularly declaring economic scarcity, nonprofits are willing to meet foundations’ programming and even political mandates. The work becomes compartmentalized products, desired or undesired by the foundation market, rated by trends or political relationships rather than depth of work”.

Alternatives

Grassroots Fundraising as an organizing strategy“Grassroots fundraising is a strategy to maintain a firm connection to our base and to initiate community-based economic structures”.

Community Based Economics “In a community- based economy, resources flow from and return to that same community. Connecting organizing to fundraising allows those affected by the work of an organization to determine it’s course”.

THE THREE RULES OF EPIDEMICS The law of the few: Similar to the Pareto Principle (the 80/20 rule:20% of the people are responsible for 80% of the effects). A very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the world through those special few. Social circle in reality is a pyramid.

The Stickiness Factor: There are specific ways of making a contagious message memorable: relatively simple changes in the presentation and structuring of information can make a big difference in how much of an impact it makes.

The power of context: Human beings are a lot more sensitive to their environment than they seem. Behavior is a function of social context. For instance, it becomes hard to keep up with a social group when it's size increases beyond 150. (This number is actually called the Dunbar number).