Flickr

There is bound to be overlap in the articles but if we could divide up the information under these two headings regardless I think it would be helpful in the end for our presentation and write up.
 * Flickr Case Studies**

ROUND 1) (Who has had success with flickr, why should they use this site?)

__What is Flickr?__ [] Flickr is a popular online photo sharing community that allows anyone to share and organize their digital photos with friends, family, colleagues and the rest of the world. Members can join and create groups and participate in discussions on literally any topic. While many people use Flickr recreationally, it can also be a powerful tool for organizations, including nonprofits such as Shepherds of Good Hope. There are many ways that Flickr can help nonprofits share photos online and accomplish their goals. International organizations who send volunteer doctors to developing countries around the world to perform medical services can document the impact of their work through photos that they upload to the organizations Flickr group. Organizations usually end up with hundreds of unorganized photos that are scattered on various hard drives in the office and get forgotten. Flickr can help these organizations to organize and manage their photos, making them easily accessible and more functional. Flickr is a very useful way to share your organization’s photos and images with other people, whether privately or publicly. It offers an amazing online community and is fairly easy to use. Many nonprofits are discovering that Flickr can be an important part of the organizational communications strategy ([]). Flickr can be used in many different ways, depending on what your organization is trying to do. The following will show various case studies on how organizations have used Flickr.

__The Children At Risk Foundation__ The Children At Risk Foundation (CARF) is an organization in Brazil formed in 1993 to benefit the street children of Brazil by defending their rights and offering them a sustainable solution so that they could live and grow within a family-oriented context and healthy social environment ([]). CARF launched an annual fundraising campaign entirely on Flickr. The campaign asks supporters to **donate $10 per person** to support its street kids programs and to also contribute their own photos that relate to their cause. The photos and the conversations they generate show how a small donation of $10 can make a dramatic difference ([]). Here is the campaign - [] Their Changemaker Campaign believes in a world that responds quickly and effectively to social challenges, and where each individual has the freedom, confidence and community support to address any social problem and drive change. They believe that Flickr is full of potential Changemakers and therefore have been using the website for their creative fundraising campaigns. The website has more than a million members with a million more who visit the website. CARF had to figure out how to go about releasing the hidden potential of such a vast global community. They had to figure out what makes people feel enough compassion and unity in order to support a solution to a given problem. For some it may be going out and being an active member in the cause, for others it can simply be a financial donation to the solution. It is the later that CARF chose to focus on with this campaign. The organization constantly has to come up with quick and creative ways of finding solutions to urgent problems, most involving a minimum of funding to make it happen. The funding can sometimes be hard to find and the organization has noticed that many people who donate money usually only do so when a catastrophe has been broadcast all over the media. CARF however also believes that there is the potential for people to still make small everyday actions towards each other in order to make a difference ([]). The CARF campaign is organized into “Case Studies” of different problems that they are faced with as they work with street children and other children at risk. These problems are either looking for a solution or the funding to implement one. To showcase these case studies, CARF is using **photos to illustrate the problems** that they are facing. One such case study involves the need for funding to build bathrooms for an underprivileged community in Brazil. They **show the community as a discussion thread on their CARF Flickr Group page**. The thread is basically a **blog with pictures**. The text explains what the community needs – a new bathroom; shows what they have now – rundown shacks, no clean drinking water; and what Flickr members can do to help out this community – donate money. They **show pictures of the villagers**, mostly children, and **give anecdotes** on how they have been helped in the past. They then **state the amount of money they are aiming for with this campaign**. Over time, there are more entries from CARF stating that they have reached a certain amount in their campaign, but are still looking for more, and **ask the Flickr users to invite their friends to the Group**. Eventually they **put up pictures of a finished bathroom that they have constructed through their donations**. This blog not only helped CARF to receive donations for this small village, but it also **gave the donators an inside look on exactly where their money was going**. The blogging of photos and text also helped to **create discussion amongst the Flickr users**. Discussion threads were created on everything from **volunteer stories to brainstorming solutions to problems CARF was encountering**. This social media platform then becomes a space for **conversation and brainstorming**, **creating a community of ‘Changemakers**.’ CARF realized that today with so many different social media platforms and different interest groups, the best thing to do was to **narrow their focus to one area, being Flickr users**. The organization **focused on these photography lovers and used their own photographs and stories to reach this group of people**. This is an excellent example of how NPO’s are directly reaching out to an engaging in existing and prospective members and supporters. They created a new opportunity for collaboration, conversation and co-creation of knowledge through photography (Greenberg & MacAulay, 2009). Rather than simply asking for money for their organization as a whole, they were able to show exactly why they needed donations and where the donations were going. This helped to create trust between CARF and the Flickr community. The relationships created between CARF and the Flickr communities are crucial to building their financial capital (Greenberg & MacAulay). Their frequent updates on the village progress and money raised also helped to keep users engaged in the campaign, wanting to constantly check back to the group to see the progress that was being made on account of their help. In the end the campaign raised $5,388.00 (their initial goal was $7,200.00), and were able to build the village new washroom facilities ([]).

__Lance Armstrong Foundation__ – [] -The organization was founded in 1997, and is more popularly known as ‘Livestrong.’ The foundation provides a much needed network of support for people diagnosed with cancer and their families. LAF seeks to empower people who have been affected by cancer by having the mindset of being survivors rather than victims. The organization helps people find the information, support and courage they need to face the fight against cancer head on. -LAF has fully embraced social media, including Twitter, blogs, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr. They are all used in innovative ways to help run the organization’s web community more efficiently. **Flickr is used to help pull in photos from supporters at various events**. They have even held some contests, one being **a contest** asking people to show off the coolest place they have taken their iconic yellow Livestrong bracelet. They used only Flickr to collect entries and received 400 in just three days ([]). The Livestrong Flickr group mostly encompasses the events that are put on by the organization. For example one of their **biggest photo sets includes only photos taken on Livestrong Day 2009**. The photos are from people all over the world who participated in the day, and then posted their pictures on the Flickr website, tagging the photos as ‘livestrongarmy’ for the group administer to organize into a set. The Livestrong Day 2009 set has over 100 photographs and has received over 800 views. The photos contributed to the Livestrong group by the Flickr users helps to **create a community around the cause of the organization**. This organization was able to **bring people together** with the common interest of helping to fight cancer, **provide support** to those battling the disease on one way or another, and **enabled the public to advocate** on behalf of their own needs and interests through posting their own pictures of how they are participating in the fight. They want to make people who are dealing with cancer in any way to be able to see that they are not alone and that **they are all together in this fight**. They are creating a two-way form of communication not through text, but through photographs alone (Greenberg & MacAulay). The implementation of a discussion board might help to generate written communication among the users, but it was found that they use their other social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and blogs to do so.

__March of Dimes__ - __[]__ March of Dimes is an organization that focuses on the issue of premature birth created a photo contest on Flickr to mark premature birth awareness month in November. The **campaign urged supporters to photograph** where they kept their spare change to call attention to the fact that premature babies weigh less than a handful of change. Be A Coin Star attracted more than 100 participants and 200 photo entries. The users with pictures with the most votes at the end of each day became ‘Coin Stars.’ One of the primary goals of nonprofit organizations is to gain the support of targeted audiences. They attempt to accomplish this by developing messages regarding their cause and distributing such messages to a wide demographic ([]). The March of Dimes was hoping, through their Coin Star campaign to **gain more support from those demographics who use the social media platform Flickr and from those who check their site regularly**. Their creative photography campaign was successful in helping more people understand their message of how tiny and fragile babies born prematurely are.

__Why SOGH Should Use Flickr__ ? This type of social media platform could work for the Shepherds of Good Hope in many different ways. If they were looking to fix up one of their facilities for example, they could document through photos and a blog exactly what their facility is doing in terms of programming for the homeless, and how it needs to be changed. They can ask Flickr users to donate even as little as $10 each and through those donations can continually post their updates. This could also work for food and clothing donations. If SOGH were to take pictures of a sparse supply room and state that they are in need of food or clothing, and then state how and where the public can do so, in the end they will be able to photograph all of the donations and thank the users for their kindness. If SOGH wanted to show the community their events, Flickr can be used to do so in that way as well. A photographer from the organization can post photos, and through other social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, SOGH can ask event attendees to post their own photos with a specific tag so that they can be posted on the SOGH Flickr group. For those supporters who are not Flickr members already, other social media platforms can also be used to advertise the website with a direct link. This will help to increase traffic on more than one platform, but again this will involve much time and effort on the organizations part in terms of regular updates and the posting of new content.

Helpful links… http://bethkanter.wikispaces.com/flickr [] [] [] []

[]

ROUND 2) (How others have used it to have success, what works?)

Flickr is a useful tool for individuals and organizations to network and create online communities by uploading photos. Non-profit organizations, such as CARF and March of Dimes, have proven to benefit from the use of Flickr. A number of non-profit organizations used five different techniques to optimize the full potential of their website.

1. Run a photo contest

An organization can utilize their Flickr album in order to engage followers. Non profit organizations can host a photo contest. The organization invites their supporters to post their photos. Organizations also add their Flickr group link onto their website and offer a photo RSS so that when a new photo or comment is added they are immediately notified. Contests like this enable interactivity between the non-profit organization and potential donors and allows for great feedback from the community.

2. Tell your story via Flickr

A non-profit organization can use photos to explain their cause. An organization can set up a Flickr account, post pictures about their cause which enables them to spread their story or connect with their supporters and create a Flickr group. Groups can be private or public and can be organized around an event, subject or pretty much anything. An abundance of pictures is not necessary, a few pictures is sufficient to illustrate an organization's cause. Camera Rwanda exemplifies of how Flickr can be used to tell a story. Camera Rwanda has catapulted its success by raising awareness of AIDs and poverty in Africa via photography. Camera Rwanda also explains that images followed by a well-written story can inspire a viewer to be a donor. A Flickr account can act as a constantly updated newsletter where staff can share how and who their work has benefited.

3. Promote your event

Upload your event photos and encourage your attendees to do the same. You can create sets or sub folders within your Flickr account to showcase your event photos and share them with everyone. This will help you reach a much wider audience than if you just posted them on your web site. As an example, here are Flickr photos from the NTEN conference http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=07ntc&m=tags.

4. Launch a Campaign

Non-profit organizations can launch a fundraising campaign via Flickr. There are many advantages to launching campaigns on Flickr. They can be easily done on a low budget; nonprofits could really increase their visibility, provide an interactive community for supporters and engage new audiences. A great example of a fundraising campaign on Flickr is The Children at Risk Foundation. They are asking supporters to donate $10 per person to support their street kids programs and to contribute their own photos to their Flickr group. The photos and the conversations they generate show how a small amount of money $10 can make a huge difference.

5. Engage your Volunteers

Encouraging volunteers to share photos, ideas and stories allows your nonprofit to take advantage of the creativity of as many people as possible and engage them in your cause. Volunteers are an asset for all nonprofit organizations and they are always willing to help.