Friendly Web Tools Blog

Check out my latest article in The Jewish Daily Forward, which articulates how many of the nonprofits we come into contact with are struggling to keep up with technology. I’m already hearing some “mazel tovs” and “Yes, we’re hearing the same thing toos.”

Technologically Impaired?
Jewish Organizations Struggle To Keep Pace With New Technologies
By Monique Cuvelier
Wed. Jun 18, 2008

Honorary Member of the Tribe. Good for the Jewish people. Rabbi of technology. Three phrases I’ve heard more than once to describe myself.

How, you might ask, did a girl raised in a Baptist church in Colorado (my parents lived down the road from the Focus on the Family headquarters) simultaneously learn how to correctly pronounce the word “nachas” and carve a niche for herself as the gentile helper of Jewish technophobes?

The question occurred to me sometime between coaching new rabbis on how to take an online course and helping a team of teachers bring social media from synagogues to a wider audience, part of the work of my company, Talance, Inc.

The answer: In short, it happened because the Jewish philanthropic world I’ve been working in since 2003 needs help. Technology is whizzing forward, picking up secular not-for-profits and Christian evangelists who have figured out how Web 2.0 — usually those technologies that bring people together through such social networks like MySpace, or encourage people to generate their own content — can assist them with growth and with community building. Meanwhile, many Jewish not-for-profits and synagogues are left behind, confused by the options and unsure of the relevance.

“Honestly, we have to quit asking other Jewish nonprofits for their advice,” said a client of mine who works for a New York-based Jewish not-for-profit. “When we ask them for information, they say, ‘We don’t know, but if you find out, tell us.’ They’re as clueless as we are.”

It’s understandable. Everybody’s a little clueless with new technology. It seems that every week, the next, brightest social media tool is all the rage.

Many secular or non-Jewish not-for-profits realize that this revolution is big and scary and unknown, but they are curious about it and willing to learn. The smart ones have figured out that with a little technical chutzpah they can reach a lot of minds out there, and as a result they’re changing more lives.

Look at Kiva.org, a microlending Web site that lets people such as Paul in North Carolina and Jake from Gainesville, Fla., lend money to small-time entrepreneurs in places like Uganda. If it weren’t for the connectivity of Web 2.0, Kiva never would have generated microloans valuing more than $32 million. Or take MoveOn.org, which gave liberals a stronger voice by creating a forum for them to gather and become active.

So what exactly is breaking down when you take the term “not-for-profit” and put the word “Jewish” in front of it?

It could be a matter of where the money’s coming from. MoveOn.org and Kiva.org are both extremely well funded by a wide range of sources, which makes it easy for them to experiment with new technologies. Plus, many secular not-for-profits receive a push to embrace new technology from behind the scenes.

“Some of the secular nonprofits have boards of trustees and directors with people from large corporations that exert pressure to budget the money necessary for technical development,” said Steven Lubetkin, senior fellow of the Society for New Communications Research and a synagogue tech consultant in New Jersey. He spends most of his time with his podcasting business, ProfessionalPodcasts.com.

“They don’t usually do that in the Jewish not-for-profit world, because so many are owned or controlled by a federation,” he said.

Rabbi Hayim Herring, executive director of Minneapolis-based STAR (Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal), which helps synagogues understand and use technology, knows federations well. He thinks there may be a cultural reason that funders aren’t pushing for more daring Internet use.

“Historically, we’ve been a people of the book, not a people of the byte,” he said. “Our medium up until now has been the text, and those who work in this media are more comfortable with the printed word. There are some synagogues that do their bulletin totally electronically, but not too many.”

Many Christian organizations — especially evangelical ones — have the spirit of startups in Northern California’s Silicon Valley and are definitely composed of people of the byte. Lay preachers can start up churches, and their goal from day one is to grow as big as possible as fast as possible. They do this by spreading the Good News anywhere they can, and accepting new converts. Not surprisingly, they find it easier to tinker with new technologies. In a time when attendance in organized religion everywhere is declining, innovations that promise to reach out to potentially millions of people sound pretty attractive.

These organizations have identified Web 2.0 communication as a tool for their ministries, and many are creating impressive Web presences. The Web site for Revolution Church in Kansas City (www.kcrevolution.org) has a podcast. It also links to a page on MySpace, the popular social-networking site, and has an account on Flickr, an image-hosting site and community platform. Sugar Creek Baptist Church in Sugar Land, Texas (www.sugarcreek.net), hosted a blog that informed members about the development of a new building while accepting online donations to pay for it.

Rabbi Aaron Spiegel, information technology director of the predominantly Christian Indianapolis Center for Congregations, said, “This is exactly what congregations are trying to foster, a venue for [them] to give feedback and voice their opinion.” Not to do so, he noted, is to risk alienating a host of future generations — generations that take technology for granted.

In fact, these younger generations, especially millennials, who are just now entering the work force, are likely to be the ones bringing Jewish philanthropies into the 21st century. Today’s 24-year-olds grew up with this technological revolution; they were in diapers when the Internet took hold. Technology was never something they had to get used to, but not having it feels like deprivation.

Sharna Goldseker, vice president of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, directs 21/64, a project that helps wealthy millennials understand how to invest their resources. Goldseker also works with federations on how to bring “next-generations” into their networks.

“We’re seeing a generational shift,” she said. “The next generation interacts differently with technology than older generations. Historically, Jewish institutions spoke for the community. Web 2.0 technology encourages the institution to speak with the community.”

These people will force the landscape of all philanthropies — Jewish or otherwise — to change, even if it’s a difficult task. “It’s easy to look back and outline shifts [in our culture], but when you’re in them, it feels turbulent,” Goldseker said.

As Spiegel said: “They have to change. No doubt about it. The Jewish world as a group has to be more responsive to the world and the way things work. If we don’t, more and more people are going to say, ‘This world is irrelevant to my life, and I’m not going to participate.’ The benefit of responding is, they get to stay relevant and in business.

“It will happen,” Spiegel said, “probably sooner rather than later.”

[This article about how politicians in the UK are using the Web appears in the February issue of N-TEN.]

by Monique Cuvelier, Talance, Inc.

Back when everyone was saying Al Gore “invented the Internet,” no one rolled their eyes more than the Brits. Back then, the very notion of Internet-based technologies was enough to send British eyes into one-eighties, never mind the marriage of politics and social media. The idea of the Queen appearing on YouTube? Patently ridiculous.

What a change a few years can bring, because there she is, on YouTube’s Royal Channel with her annual Christmas speech and video clips of Prince William flying a plane.
She’s not the only UK leader who has gone digital, as politicians are looking to social media tactics to gain more youthful support.

Our politicians are starting to investigate the possibilities of social media as a way of accessing younger audiences,” says Sara Waddington, managing editor of FUMSI, an online publication that tracks the information industry. “We have a general election coming up and a lot of middle England is dissatisfied with this government’s taxation stance, so it will need to look at ways of attracting new voters from different age ranges and groups.”

With the next general election looming in 2009, politicians are beginning to mirror their American counterparts in hopes of winning more votes. Until recently, the Brits didn’t need to be so cozy with social media. In the last three general elections, the UK population was voting — for Tony Blair. Oasis’s Noel Gallagher was New Labour’s wingman and famously visited Blair at 10 Downing Street for celebratory drinks. Blair was hip, young Britons felt empowered, and the War on Terror yet hadn’t begun.

Now Blair is gone, the War on Terror is dragging on, and many young voters especially feel jilted by campaign promises that never materialized. So, they’re not voting.
British politicians are flirting with social media to see if they can win them back.

To wit:
* The Conservatives launched webcameron, their glassy Web 2.0 home where readers can view leader David Cameron’s blog or read guest bloggings by the likes of John McCain.
* Left-wing Liberal Democrats launched Flock Together, inspired by how Howard Dean tapped MeetUp.com to gain grassroots support for campaign planning and local meetings. Those who need a constant jolt can use the site’s Twitter page.
* Before he stepped down, Tony Blair hired Zack Exley, John Kerry’s presidential campaign director, who directed Internet operations for the Labour party. He is largely credited with helping Blair with his third consecutive victory.

But it doesn’t go much beyond flirting. The social media relationship hasn’t quite developed into the deep embrace American politicos have. The Queen, for instance, mistakenly referred to “OneTube.” While Barack Obama’s chaotic MySpace page boasts 281,141 friends, the only “Gordon Brown” profile on MySpace has four friends and a lack of proper punctuation.

UK politicians may be slower than their American counterparts to adopt social media, but as one recent study from the UK communications regulatory body Ofcom indicates, they’ll catch up. The UK has higher usage of Facebook and MySpace than the rest of Europe, with one in four UK adults tapping into social networks 23 times a month. Those are numbers that are hard to ignore, no matter what side of the Pond you’re on.

Monique Cuvelier is CEO of Talance, Inc., a company that helps nonprofits - in the US and abroad - understand better how to use technology through online courses and websites. She has been writing for UK-based publications since 1996. Learn more at www.talance.com.