Cognitive Flexibility Theory is about preparing people to select, adapt, and combine knowledge and experience in new ways to deal with situations that are different than the ones they have encountered before,” says Rand Spiro of Michigan State University.

The non-profit landscape changed significantly in the last ten years. Digital and social media provides new opportunities for transparency, customization, and interaction between non-profits and their supporters and volunteers.

While some newer non-profits have leveraged these changes, many have been insulating themselves from these changes. 43% of non-profits currently spend $0 on social media.

A lack of understanding of these new tools as well as feeling discouraged, overwhelmed, and under-resourced keep many from moving forward. Yet it’s clear that unless executives and leaders deeply integrate these tools into every part of their organization (marketing, fundraising, HR, etc), they are headed for decline and irrelevancy.

“There are always new contexts and you just can’t rely on old templates. Cognitive security is what people want. It doesn’t work in the modern world of work and life.”–Rand Spiro

Fortunately many opportunities to explore digital media abound, and the cost and effort to get started is close to zero. A common practice for non-profits who find themselves frozen is to start a Facebook Page or Twitter account without formally announcing or promoting it, and to start posting and measuring their success.

This can provide the space to innovate and freedom to fail, encouraging those in the organization who value digital media, and demonstrating to the decision makers the value of investing in it’s implementation.

Someone has to start the process. In ministries and non-profits it’s often someone on the fringe of the organization. Leaders looking for these digital champions can perform a Twitter search or see if anyone has created a Facebook group or page for their organization.

Change can start to gain momentum once their is at least one executive and one digital champion working together.

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“There is no future in any business model that is cemented in reactive engagement.”–Brian Solis

Transitioning from an organization that shouts to one that listens and interacts takes leadership, vision, and patience. It’s difficult to help an organization understand that those outside of it’s walls expect a relationship, not just transactional interactions (giving and volunteering in particular).

A social media strategy is more than marketing. It’s a tool to help change an industrial era mindset that focused on products and transactions more than services and interactions.

Practically this can start by using a tool such as Hootsuite or Buffer to begin scheduling content to share with the different segments of your audience and opportune times. Scheduling content in advance also helps those maintaining these social media channels invest more time on interaction and engagement (liking, commenting, RT-ing other people’s content).

When a crisis or major opportunity happens it’s also easier to dedicate energy towards either responding to it or creating content to leverage it for maximum engagement.

“Contributing value to people and investing time and energy into networks of relevance will also earn any organization a position of equal or greater influence.”–Solis

“Value to people” rarely comes from talking about yourself online. Relevant influencers and organizations online share content from a variety of places, and take the time to regularly listen to what others are saying, and integrate that information into what they share online.

What if 1/3 of the content you scheduled came from other people? Thoughtfully sharing content from other people is still extremely rare online (especially on Facebook). This is a tremendous opportunity for non-profits, who often want to translate their caring personality to their online personas.

Do you know the online influencers in your particular areas of desired influence? Does your content resemble the same themes that they are sharing? If they visited your Facebook page or Twitter account would they see mostly information about you or a genuine interest in interacting and empowering others?

The first step is to stop reacting.

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“Today, for the first time in history, we can accurately map and measure person-to-person interaction. Our online social networks connect millions of people and support communication between these people. We can measure who is connected to whom, who talks to whom and who share ideas with whom.”–Jeff Hurt

Traditional outreaches involve lots of front-end promotion, a large in person gathering, an emotional appeal, minimal follow-up, and metrics around an intellectual response (a decision of some sort).

Social media provides a new opportunity to measure the sentiment of the audience before, during, and after the event, as well as track the action behavior that resulted from participating in the event.

Many ministry leaders intuitively sensed that these events involved a lot of effort and often lead to minimal long-term results, but now social media reveals exactly whether a decision resulted in any life-change.

Drawing a crowd and mobilizing people towards significant life change are not as interconnected as once thought. The data coming out of social networks such as Facebook reveal that most people are connecting with a few close friends even though they may have a large network, and are influenced more by the choices of these friends than the words of a speaker.

“Successful organizations of the future will move toward an understanding of how groups of friends talk about their brand, products and services.”–Jeff Hurt

Successful outreaches in the future (or present) will focus their resources on influencing and mobilizing small groups of friends with content that they are already interested in and are talking about, instead of using resources to push people towards content that is unfamiliar. By successful I mean long-term life change, not a high energy, large group, event.

Any ministry would do well to use social media to evaluate whether there is evidence of the life-change and mission that is being talked about. If people are participating in activities but posting pictures of themselves living a worldly life-style then there might be a gap worth addressing.

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“The answers lie in intelligence and empathy. Leadership unfolds in how you translate what you learn and feel into appreciation and understanding of the state of customer sentiment and how that correlates to the state of customer relationships.”–Brian Solis

It’s easy for ministries to assume they know more about the people they are seeking to mobilize, give, or lead in their organization. Before these people were Tweeting, Instagraming, Pinterestizing, and Facebooking educated guesses and gut feelings sufficed as decision making tools.

Today educated guesses and gut feelings waste resources and slow down the process of learning and fine-tuning strategies that lead to significant results.

Intelligence–Focused, Real-Time Information

A first step to practicing intelligence on a personal level is creating a list on Facebook and/or Twitter. If you are not using social media specifically and intentionally then you are still experiencing social media from a consumer’s perspective, not a leader or influencer.

Leaders maximize their time and invest in the few so that many will ultimately benefit. If you are logging into Facebook and Twitter and waiting for the information to come to you, the content you see is not filtered or focused.

Empathy–Emotional and Specific Understanding

Spending time intentionally listening creates tremendous sympathy. It forces me to place their opinions and preferences over mine, which is a powerful practice to build into your week.

If you have a strategic plan or recently generated goals or tactics for your ministry, consider how many of them were shaped by empathy and understanding.

“Once you listen, not monitor, but truly listen to customer activity and observe online behavior, you cannot help but feel both empathy and harmony.”–Brian Solis

What are some things you have learned about your members, volunteers, or donors from listening? Has listening helped create empathy?

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