NetSquared enables social benefit organizations to leverage the tools of the social web.

net2 updates

Building community in your area? Check out the newly-launched Community Organizers Handbook! Everything you need to start and grow a NetSquared Local group or any other community-powered program.

Blogs

net2 local

NetSquared Local events provide a chance to connect locally with all those interested in the intersection of social technologies and social change. There are new groups forming every week: Join in!

net2 updates

Building community in your area? Check out the newly-launched Community Organizers Handbook! Everything you need to start and grow a NetSquared Local group or any other community-powered program.

N2Y4 Finalist Pitch Feedback (Part 2)

At N2Y4, a number of projects received an extra, $5,000 prize as part of a grant from the French American Charitable Trust (FACT). In addition to these awards, FACT has generously funded NetSquared and TechSoup Global to provide development assistance to all of the finalists from N2Y4.

Behind the scenes, we're working hard to identify and make connections to funders that might be interested in the featured projects, but before we make introductions we're asking the NetSquared community to help refine pitches and hone messages. To this end, we've asked each N2Y4 Finalist to create a 5-minute or shorter Slidecast - a self-playing Slideshare presentation - and will be posting them in batches to the NetSquared blog. Please provide feedback, advice, tips, and/or guidance in the comment field below.

Up for our second post, The Extraordinaries and a collaborative pitch from Digital Democracy and VozMob:

 

Share this

Comments on the Extraordinaries presentation

Well-done and well-polished. The examples are simple but clear, and the statistics presented are useful without being overwhelming. Also...I love the superheroes at the end :)

If I had to add one thing, it would be an explicit "how to get involved" or "why we need your support" at the end. Funders are going to be impressed at your media coverage and history of winning competitions -- but they'll simultaneously think, "well, they'll be well-funded whether or not we give them anything." Your success will be a double-edged sword here. So you need to concretely make the case for why more funding is needed. You look very professional, but you almost look too professional -- like everything's already finished. Show the funders something unfinished -- something they can help build.

Comments on VozMob presentation

You all know I love VozMob, and this presentation captures some of the really innovative strategies for amplifying a marginalized community's voice. And without knowing what will be said alongside the slides being displayed, it's hard to get a full idea of the presentation.

But from the slides included, I think you're still missing the "how" -- how does collecting a community's voice(s) on a single website help amplify their voice, and how will that help the members of that community? I'm sure you have several answers to that, and I'm not suggesting that you don't, just that you need to make them explicit. If you do in what you say along with the slides, then no worries.

I know you also have a really compelling (to me, anyway) theory of change that is part of this, and perhaps that's what you're presenting during the "popular education" slide -- but one way or another I hope that comes across, because I think it does significantly differentiate you from many of the "cool tech donations to marginalized populations" projects -- of which, let's be honest, there are many.

The VozMob+Digital Democracy integration is really exciting and I almost think it deserves its own presentation (or more slides). Again, though, maybe you're explaining a lot more verbally that's not on the slides.

Comments on Digital Democracy presentation

The project examples you give are great, and really speak to the depth of creativity in connecting activists with each other and with diasporic and sympathetic communities around the world.

The "problem/solution" slide seemed like it was reaching a little too far though. Civil war solved by networking? Use of child soldiers prevented through education? No doubt these are important, even critical parts of the solution -- but presenting them as linearly following from one to the next, or binary opposites that just take the flip of a switch in the form of a policy, seems to go beyond your evidence and really reaches outside of what you're trying to show with your slideshow in any case. People (and funders) familiar with these kinds of intractable problems are going to be skeptical of anyone who comes to them with the perfect solution, especially an entire list of them.

You have some brilliant solutions, and I'd focus on illustrating them, but not trying to present them as the only possible solution.

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

User login

Latest Comments

Sitemap