Using Blogs and Wikis in Advocacy and Non-profits

Katie and I went to a thing at Minnesota Public Radio‘s studios yesterday evening to, I don’t know, “celebrate” Election Night. It was part of their Policy and a Pint series and featured a stage with some radio personalities doing campaign trivia and interviewing wonks. In one corner was a series of tiered tables with a bunch of bloggers in front of their laptops.

Ultimately, it was not the ideal place to wait for results to come in: it was too loud and the only way to get results was by watching some MPR geek surfing the Web on a projector above the stage or CNN on the flatscreens next to the stage.

We did run into an old friend and his wife who we literally haven’t seen for six or seven years. I talked with Mike quite a bit. He’s been working for a public affairs firm doing a lot of online advocacy work and is about to start up his own consulting business, aimed at the niche of higher education using social media for advocacy. Yes, there’s a market there, and yes, I think he’s going to do well at it.

We talked briefly about the work I do with a small environmental non-profit. As chair of the communications committee, I recently helped launch a new Web site for the group. It was a long time coming and very generously donated by a Web designer. It was a project well underway before I got involved with the group and there are some things I wish we could have done differently, but it works for now. I’d like to redesign it, but I think I’m going to focus on trying out a blog, a wiki, or both, first.

This non-profit is focused on the conservation of one of Minnesota’s crown jewel parks and the group’s membership and potential membership is mostly people who love the park. How great would a wiki about the park be? We are constantly seeking ways to engage our membership and engage people who love the park but aren’t members (but who should be). Part of our mission is to “promote” the park and the Web site’s primary mission is to provide information about it.

A wiki would engage our membership and potential membership and provide valuable information and promotion for the park, at minimal cost to the cash-strapped organization.