With that, I want to add a couple of thoughts to your excellent post (above) about cause fatigue and the challenges for nonprofits.

1) More than movements. Realistically, if organizations want to have real, meaningful, measurable impact on the issue(s) that they are designed to support - hunger, the environment, education, whatever - they are going to have to do more than create a movement to support their work.  People want to see real change.  They want to feel like they are involved in something that is having an impact.  And they want to know that the investment they make, in time or treasure, is worthwhile.  That feeling has no time limits.

We have known for a while that launching a campaign wasn’t enough - its a good way to raise awareness and attention for an issue, but when the campaign ends, the momentum fades.  Movements are designed to go further, do more to sustain people’s interest and participation, and of course drive greater impact.  But in the vernacular of organizing, especially online, I’m increasingly concerned that the word ‘movement’ has simply replaced the word ‘campaign.’  Everybody wants to start a movement now, and understand how to use technology, and social media, to make that happen. But few are willing to embrace the huge organization and institutional commitments necessary to create and sustain a movement. The term is being co-opted, the level of excitement and commitment towards creating movements is growing, but we are still running in place in terms of truly shifting how causes are addressed and most nonprofits use the web.

The holy grail of organizing, offline and now online too, is the ability to create sustainable shifts in behavior.  Getting people to do something once or twice is critically important, and no small task in its own right, but it still just one of the very early steps towards real impact.  To make people healthier, or to significantly reduce their carbon footprint, or to transform communities, or to dramatically improve schools or really anything of significant size requires a commitment that is operationalized day after day after day after day. Its not enough for the numbers to improve for a month or a year, only to have people fall off the wagon and go back to their old behaviors when the pressure on them lets up.  Its not enough for an organization to reach its goals and then move on to other projects, leaving society to fend for itself.  Some organizations, like the American Heart Association and Feeding America (note: a client) are starting to think that way, while also realizing the longer-term approach is much more complicated than just maintaining effort for a longer period of time.

Behavior change can be generational, or glacial. Within organizations that might mean new leadership emerges, not by coup but naturally over time, so that a new perspective and capacity just evolves internally.  You want a different donor base, you may have to wait for the old donor base to disappear, or for the organization to re-organize and re-present itself so that new and different audiences find it compelling and relevant.  For communities, that change occurs as houses change ownership over time and kids grow up, as the fabric of the neighborhoods change and priorities of local officials adapt.  Those changes are happening faster today, because of the influence of technology and the internet, the level of awareness and particiation from people at the grassroots level in issues where they were never involved before.  But, you don’t see the long-term commitment by organizations in most cases.  You don’t see the organizations changing their mission, their focus, their staffing, and their tactics (not to mention their technology) to reflect the changing times.  Many either focus on their operational needs  (which I have ranted about before, as you know), which sometimes obscures the larger focus, or simply add new discrete projects around a particular issue or opportunity — failing to coordinate their thinking or look at how all the pieces fit together and create real change.

2) A reset: I like to talk about a reset, a total re-thinking and re-structuring of how our organizations operate, where they focus, the efforts they pursue, and how they support them.  Nothing is sacred.  Everything has to be revised, from business models and organizational structures to the audience(s) that are being served and the tools, messaging, and support a group provides.  That begins with a shift in focus, away from campaigns (and even movements) and towards a focus on long-term, sustainable, shifts in behavior - if you have a whole new, different challenge, the natural response is to come up with a whole new, different way to address that challenge.  But it also includes a greater commitment to collaboration between groups, and coordination across the sector.  There are simply too many groups competing for attention and resources, trying to figure out the answers to complex questions on their own.  Similarly, there are too many consultants offering tools and advice that doesn’t do anything but serve one group’s interests, when the larger community and society is what needs the attention and support.

We need to more thoughtfully and fully engage the audience/community in the process of re-thinking the approach, the structure, and similar.  I would also suggest a new role, for experts and advocates, people who aren’t connected to one group or carrying water for one form of communication or platform, to help address the broad changes that need to occur, to help the individual groups to adapt their focus, and similar. And the media, the way it operates, what it covers, and the role that we - as organizers and advocates - expect it to play must all be transformed.  Everything is in play, everything needs to change, and I am under no illusions that these changes will happen naturally, without help, or soon.  But rather than think about a different strategy for using social media to tackle an issue, I suggest we look at how the concept of social has revolutionized and changed our whole society, what that means to the strategies nonprofits and causes must pursue, and then look back at what we can do to use the tools different and more appropriately to meet our goals.