Bringing out the best talent and knowledge from around the borough (my new home at the time), the 2009 Brooklyn Skillshare (BKSS) focused on sharing knowledge for the purpose of community building rather than merely professional development. Organized by individuals who understand that learning happens best in a social context, these event demonstrate the motivation for adults when they learn from their peers. After all, Brooklyn is well-known to be populated by creative souls with talent and knowledge to match, which would ordinarily be lost if individuals kept these talents to themselves.

To promote their new series, BKSS organizers turned to social media as organizing tools, where a swarm of blog readers, email reminders, and Facebook fans helped spread the word-of-mouth. In fact it’s hard for me to recall how I first learned of BKSS, because once I discovered the event I was surrounded by a constant drum beat counting down to the event itself. When its organizers were planning this year’s follow-up, they were able to leverage their targeted lists to raise funds through Kickstarter, a crowd-sourcing social network gaining popularity among non-profits and creatives alike.

This year’s event promises to offer even more learning opportunities, but here’s a few of the classes I took at last year’s Skillshare:

• Brewing Kombucha Tea (see above)
• How to Fix a flat tire during Bike Mechanics 101
• Making Raw Food dishes
• Basics of Screen Printing
• Recording music using Home Audio equipment

Like the prior year’s classes, this year’s event is free to the public and requires no prior registration, although you’ll want to get there early to sign-up for classes (they fill up fast).  Check Brooklyn Skillshare’s website for all the details you need to know to attend this Saturday, October 9 2010 at Brooklyn Community Arts & Media HS. As a firm believer in community building through peer education I plan on attending, so let me know if you plan to join us!

Thanks to Meg Wachter on Vimeo for sharing their video from the 2009 Brooklyn Skillshare

What difference can one person make simply by asking their friends to make a charitable contribution? Any individual can help change the world, and this story is just another example to prove that (click here to play the video).

For my last birthday I challenged my friends to donate to a cause, People To People International (PTPI), instead of buying me a gift. I used the Causes application on Facebook for fundraising, and was overwhelmed by their support. I’ve written about my efforts before, and have since raised a few hundred dollars for PTPI.

My efforts earned the attention of People To People, who like most non-profit organizations are exploring all the new opportunities for fundraising that social media can offer. We connected though Facebook, where an interview was published highlighting my fundraising efforts in addition to how PTPI has impacted my life both personally and professionally.

We wanted to share my story and inspire others to try the same challenge for themselves, so I flew to Kansas City, Missouri to shoot this video. The birthday challenge has also been the subject of another recent interview accompanying the video, as part of a series highlighting the accomplishments of young people working with PTPI.

Thanks to Scenic Road Productions for creating this video promoting a good idea for a a great cause. And Happy Birthday for my friends at People to People, which celebrates their 53rd year of fostering peace through understanding this week!

Along with a team of classmates at American University, we set about creating a strategic communications plan for Living Classrooms, a non-profit organization serving underprivileged youth in the DC-metro community since founding in 2001.  One of the challenges unique to this client was their difficulty distinguishing not just from a successful parent organization, but also standing out from other non-profits in DC currently struggling for funds; branding would become a strategy.  Their hand-on education approach meant almost all of their funding was used in their programs, but was a challenge to developing new sources of fundraising. Meeting these budget limitations helped us build a strategy with specific objectives (met through some work on our own part).

As discussed in our presentation (and memo), creating and using a Blog and Twitter were critical tactics to meet the campaigns goals.  First these online tools serve an agenda-building relationship with the local newsmedia, through which Living Classrooms would try to earn media without expensive advertising. However social media is not synonymous with free media: even though these platforms are free to use, they require thoughtful and persistent work from dedicated professionals in order to work well.

Any organization can ask someone to Twitter for them, but only a professional can make it relevant to reporters, bloggers, and others who would want to tell Living Classroom’s story.  My role in this process was to build these media tools for them, and to start using these so that Living Classrooms would could model on them; unfortunately they did not have the budget to hire someone to write  so my model was key.  While new media levels the playing field, a public communications professional can lift an organization above from the rest, so that a non-profit like Living Classrooms can stand out online.

These tactics also play a critical role in winning and retaining new donors, since they allow Living Classrooms to provide regular updates which demonstrate the value of their donation.  Because Living Classrooms, like so many non-profits, is involved in so many programs donors don’t always know about all the work their donation allows an organization to accomplish everyday.  These regular updates demonstrate the compelling work Living Classrooms does through stories told in words, videos, and pictures in the channels which new donors are likely to discover this cause.  This serves as a compliment to the newsletter and mailer our group designed, usually adapting the same material for online use.

We’re still waiting to see which parts of our strategic plan will be used by Living Classrooms this year, so in the meantime please check out the blog I set up or follow @LCNCR on Twitter to learn more. For a communications professional with a strategic approach, online tools can become a successful tactic for non-profits to  overcome limitations and expand their communications budgets, ultimately changing minds and lives of those most in need of help.