An unlikely place to experience the future of nonprofit volunteer engagement is a political website.

If you want to try out social networking, are a political junkie, or are just curious, consider checking out Barak Obama's website:  www.barakobama.com.  This is not an Obama promo, although you'll certainly get a peek at slick campaign strategy. 

For a great comparison, do the same on John McCain's site.  They make draw your own conclusions about how and when social networking works (and doesn't).

Obama's site (designed by a Facebook founder) invites you to join and receive regular emails.  Not much new in that, although I'm finding new, interesting strategy and tone in their emails.  But that's another post. 

But take a step further.  Set up a profile and get welcomed into the world of 200,000 plus "friends" of the candidate and a social network that blows your socks off.  When you sign into "My Bo" (that does bother me a bit), you get your own Dashboard where you can find events in your neighborhood, create an event and invite others, find ways to volunteer--you get the idea. 

You also get reinforced for taking part.  You get a point when you sign in each time.  Five points for hooking up with a friend (I have three--friends that is).  It sounds a bit hokey at first, but think about the reinforcing value of this, used as a volunteer engagement strategy for your nonprofit. 

Today I signed in and learned about their new tool:  Neighbor to Neighbor.  I can get a list of undecided voters in my neighborhood, a map, flyer and script.  And off I can go to make conversions. 

Learn how Obama did this, with help from Chris Hughes, one of the four founders of Facebook.

 

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