It needs to be said that ‘digital’, and all the new stuff that we call ‘social media’, isn’t really the point; relationships are the point. Same as it ever was.

And yet so much has changed. Charities now need to reach out to people in a way that isn’t just ‘marketing’ and catch people ‘in motion’ – when they are ‘goal-orientated’; meeting people where they are, in real-time (or near real-time), around what is interesting to them. It is no longer a question of simply delivering content to people; it’s about your convening power to help people discover each other to help make the change you both want.

The trouble is, by treating social media as just another ‘channel’, in-house departments are often completely unprepared when people ‘answer back’, and struggle to make the required change in tone and posture. With a few exceptions, our sector does not have a great track record when it comes to distributing trust to staff and many organisations have created a bottleneck as communication is funnelled via a handful of staff. Social media has become just another silo.

We really need a much broader (and deeper) organisational alignment around supporters. I want everyone who works for a charity to be seen more as assets and advocates than as cost streams to be subsidised. This seems to me to be even more sensible as we are challenged to do more with less; charity leaders have a passionate community right under their noses: their own staff.

I agree with Will McInnes who is convinced that eventually…

every member of staff [will] need to have some level of responding power and be empowered to use social media to communicate and build relationships with the people around them.

I think that this is inevitable and irresistible, but is your charity ready to create new roles, re-train, and reallocate resources and budgets?

I was invited to give a so-called “masterclass” [cough] at the Social Media Exchange in London this week. (This is me setting up and ‘delivering‘!)

You may already know that I’m a huge fan of Flickr. I’ve remained loyal since 2004, and despite some recent ups and downs (thanks, Yahoo!), the Flickr community continues to build great things, such as The Commons, which I talked a little about on Monday, and which has it’s own passionate supporters.

You can view this deck on Slideshare, but this time I thought it would be appropriate to upload the slides (as images) to Flickr! I think they’re easier to read, but you can see for yourself!

Thanks to Joanna Juber – the charity’s Digital Engagement Manager – for inviting me to speak on a range of topics I will be blogging about over the coming months. Fundamentally, how technological innovation has always necessitated institutional innovation and how charities need to learn to be agile (the technology won’t slow to their pace).

Here’s the link to the presentation on slideshare for those of you picking this up in your feed reader, with the caveat that one or two slides make less sense without the narrative.

On my way back to Somerset on the train, I read that E. L. Doctorow once said writing a novel is like “driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

It struck me that this is much like the journey we’re all making with social media. Charities need to learn to be agile enough to get into driver’s seat, and brave enough to take the wheel and move out of second gear. It’s going to be an interesting ride. Baggsy be the co-driver.

I’m particularly looking forward to introducing Hoop MD, Sean O’Halloran who will talk about the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP). Sean has a close family link with the project.

MAP is funded by the Wellcome Trust, and is led by Professor Bob Snow at Oxford University. Malaria is one of the world’s biggest killers – but it is preventable if the right steps are taken. MAP charts the prevalence of malaria throughout the globe, and Bob’s team eventually want to make real time data available online.

Sean is as excited as I am about the creative potential of social technologies to mash up and interpret the data (through mapping, visualisations, etc.) and will be joining us at 2gether on Wednesday morning to frame the enormous challenge of eradicating malaria and perhaps bring some new energy to MAP with a big dose of collaborative thinking.

That’s just what 2gether is all about.