Natalia Castaneda's blog
Learnings from Social Media Strategy Peer Learning Group with Beth Kanter
Submitted by Natalia Castaneda on Thu, 03/28/2013 - 14:38
Since January 2013, the Leadership Learning Community has been fortunate to take part in Beth Kanter’s Peer Learning Group focusing on the content and application of the book, “Measuring the Networked Nonprofit, Using Data to Change the World.” The book itself is a fabulous resource for de-mystifying social media measurement for nonprofits. It has been especially helpful in guiding us to simplify our measurement strategy, optimizing our use of social media channels, and providing valuable insight into the approaches that have worked for other nonprofits. The timing for our participation in the group is ideal, since we are in the process of planning and promoting our national event, Creating Space. The group’s materials and feedback have been instrumental in helping us craft a promotional and engagement strategy to secure registrations, generate conversations around the event, and leverage our “champions,” or Design Team, to promote the event through their networks.
LLC MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: Announcing the Design Team for Creating Space 2013
Submitted by Natalia Castaneda on Thu, 02/28/2013 - 10:15This year’s Creating Space will focus on Breaking New Ground: Leadership Development for Social Innovation and Impact. We assembled a diverse team of thought leaders to help us design a unique learning experience that allows participants to consider a broad range of leadership development experiences, both tried and true and unconventional approaches that could elevate our work to a new level of impact on complex social issues.
Take a look at the design team for Creating Space 2013!
Leadership Development Webinar Series: Most Popular Webinars
Submitted by Natalia Castaneda on Fri, 12/14/2012 - 12:27
1. Systems Thinking and Racial Justice Featuring Professor john powell (316 participants)
- In this webinar, Professor john powell talks about how systems thinking and a structural lens can inform our work for racial justice and deepen our understanding of racial disparities. He examines how the interactions of structures and institutions create not only opportunity and deprivation, but also inhabit our ideas and language about race, identity and the self.
LLC Most Popular Newsletter Articles in 2012
Submitted by Natalia Castaneda on Fri, 12/14/2012 - 12:03Tags:
1. Applying Social Network Analysis to Online Communications Networks (By Claire Reinelt and Natalia Castaneda)
Looking to increase your reach and influence in the social media space? Social Network Analysis (SNA), a research methodology that focuses on “mapping and measuring relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, computers, URLs, and other connected information/knowledge entities,” (Orgnet.com) may be the answer. We recently partnered with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to explore how to effectively apply social network analysis to public health online communications strategies, how communications networks operate in Twitter and the blogosphere, and how to identify strategic and influential connections that can be nurtured over time to extend the reach of public health messaging. This was an innovative project that produced detailed and insightful information about how to use SNA to strategize communications campaigns, and we wanted to share some of these insights with the community – including specific recommendations for identifying key messages, influencers, and engagement strategies.
Sharing Some Milestones with the Learning Community
Submitted by Natalia Castaneda on Wed, 10/31/2012 - 13:32Sharing Some Milestones with the Learning Community
We recently had a board meeting to share some of the great progress we have made in the last few months. Developing the board report was a great opportunity for the team to reflect on the milestones that we have accomplished as a learning community and we wanted to share some of the highlights with you:
· Promoting Resources and Ideas
o The Leadership Learning Community website is a great resource for our community to find resources and events, and also share ideas. The blog continues to be a dynamic section of the website (31% of unique pageviews were related to the blog in the January – September timeframe). The webinar series has generated significant traffic.
Communications Strategies to Catalyze Networks
Submitted by Natalia Castaneda on Fri, 08/31/2012 - 10:31During my time at the Leadership Learning Community, I have been involved in several social network analysis projects designed to help leadership programs and foundations understand their networks and increase their impact. One primary concern for leadership programs is how to cultivate and activate networks of their graduates. We have been using social network analysis to provide a practical way of visualizing the connections that exist in within and across cohorts and finding strategies for catalyzing more strategic connections and action. A key component in these analyses is an examination of the existing communications strategies that are in place to facilitate connection and engagement among participants – or in some cases, the exploration of potential communications strategies. After having worked on communications assessments for a variety of programs, including the Switzer Foundation Fellowship Network, the Kellogg Fellows Leadership Alliance and the Central Valley Health Policy Network, I wanted to share some of the learnings that can help others working on similar projects:
Working with Thought Leaders to Deliver Value to the Leadership Field
Submitted by Natalia Castaneda on Wed, 05/30/2012 - 11:46Tags:
By: Natalia Castaneda
Over the past few years, we have been fortunate to have the opportunity to work with some of the thought leaders in the leadership field as part of our consulting services. We partner with foundations and other organizations to help them evaluate leadership initiatives, research the field to identify challenges and opportunities, conduct social network analysis of alumni, and design leadership programs. We want to highlight some of the thought leaders that have added their expertise to our projects and helped us deliver cutting-edge project for our clients and for the leadership field.
Guest Blog Post: Weaving a Leadership Network for Nonprofit Boards
By Amy Erickson, Capacity4Good Consulting, LLC
In a conference room at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington in March 2010, approximately 100 community and nonprofit leaders and staff heard Heather McLeod Grant discuss her book Forces for Good. Heather talked about adopting a network mindset for shaping social change. As I listened and thought about the nature of this 35,000 member community, I saw an opportunity for a network weaver role. But for what purpose? The next thing I heard was my answer. Over and over I heard people asking how can we find future leaders for our boards?
In partnership with Lawson Knight, the executive director of the Blue Mountain Community Foundation, we created a network to identify, engage and prepare emerging leaders for nonprofit board service. We launched the Walla Walla Leaders Network (WWLN) thanks to funding through Philanthropy Northwest’s Community Foundation Initiative to build the capacity of nonprofits. The initiative was based on a 2009 study of the capacity needs of nonprofit organizations in Washington State, which identified eight essential elements of a healthy nonprofit ecosystem. Dubbed The Nonprofit Ecosystem Report, the findings indicated that in Walla Walla County, nonprofit boards often are populated by many of the same people, and sometimes by successive generations of family members. Community members often describe the local boards as dysfunctional.
Leadership Learning Community: Survey Findings -- What We Are Learning About Our Community
Submitted by Natalia Castaneda on Thu, 03/29/2012 - 12:15By Deborah Meehan and Natalia Castaneda
First, a big “thank you!” to all of you who took time to complete a survey to help us learn more about our community. We received 181 responses and wanted to share some of the key insights and provocative questions that your responses helped to surface.
Many of you who responded are relatively new to LLC and have connected to us primarily through our webinars and the resources available on our website. At LLC we have been talking about the changing nature of the relationship we have with our community. We believe there are several factors contributing to this change. After bringing on a fabulous marketing director, our reach has expanded tremendously. In the past two years the number of people subscribing to our newsletter, which is our primary channel for communication, has increased from 1,000 to nearly 3,000. Attracting a much larger group of people who are more broadly distributed around the US, and the globe for that matter, has transformed the way we connect from what had been face-to-face learning events to a more virtual exchange of ideas and resources. As the economy has taken a toll on travel budgets for leadership program staff and made it more difficult for us to raise funds for convenings, we have not been able to hold our national meeting Creating Space for the past couple of years.
Tapping into the Wisdom of Your Community: How We Launched the Nonprofit Leadership Webinar Series
Submitted by Natalia Castaneda on Thu, 02/02/2012 - 13:40Last year during the Leadership Learning Community board meeting we experimented with the idea of a ‘networked board’. We wondered, “How might governing in a more networked way help us to fulfill our mission of promoting leadership approaches that are more networked and collective?” And to test the idea in real time we invited several members of the LLC community, including Renato Almanzor from LeaderSpring, Beth Kanter (author of the Networked Nonprofit), and Kathy Reich from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to join the conversation during the board meeting. The discussion was inspiring as we started to imagine what it would be like to encourage a higher level of engagement from our community. One of the key take-aways for me was the fact that there is an incredible wealth of information in our community, and that asking people to share can go a long way. With this in mind, we started to think of initiatives that would greatly benefit our community and that would be feasible to implement based on the resources that we had. And that is when the LLC Nonprofit Leadership Webinar Series was created.
