Listening Literacy For Nonprofits

Beth Kanter

This is a guest post from The A-List podcast guest Beth Kanter. Beth is the author of Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media, one of the longest running and most popular blogs for nonprofits. She is a frequent technology trainer and speaker and in 2009, she was named by Fast Company magazine as one of the most influential women in technology and one of Business Week’s “Voices of Innovation for Social Media.” She is the 2009 Scholar in Residence for Social Media and Nonprofits for the Packard Foundation. A frequent contributor to many nonprofit technology web sites,blogs, and magazines, Beth has authored chapters in several books, including the ROI chapter in “Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission: A Strategic Guide for Nonprofit Leaders,” edited by NTEN published in 2009.  She is currently co-writing a book with Allison Fine to be published by Wiley in 2010 called “The Networked Nonprofit.” You can read Beth’s complete biography here.

Source: timbradshaw on flickr / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

I am an early adopter of social media and set up my listening post 5 years ago to scan for people, trends, and ideas related to social media and nonprofits. Listening and engaging with people has been critical to any success I’ve achieved as a social media practitioner – whether I’m blogging or fundraising for Cambodian children. For the past five years, I’ve been teaching social media workshops for nonprofits and lately doing deeper dives on the techniques of listening both for nonprofits and in my role as Visiting Scholar at the Packard Foundation.

This is a four-part series about listening for nonprofit organizations summarizes the insights I’ve learned about listening.

Part 1:   Listening ROI

Part 2:   Listening Literacy Skills

Part 3:   Listening Tools: A Starter Kit

Part 4:   Listening Case Study:  The Red Cross

If you’re interested in going deeper, visit my personal learning space about Social Media Listening for Nonprofits.

Look for Part 1 of this series, Listening ROI, to be published here on Monday, December 30th.