Table of Contents

Section 1 - Executive Summary    Project Mission    What is WiserEarth?    Why is WiserEarth needed?    Outreach & Messaging Strategy - Summary    Building Awareness & Participation (HOW)    WiserEarth Global Outreach Section 2 - Communication Objectives Section 3 - Defining WiserEarth’s Constituents    1. International NGO Community    2. Foundations and donor community    3. Students and academic Community    4. Other Constituents Section 4 - Differences, Benefits And Positioning of WiserEarth

Section 5 - Building Awareness And Participation in WiserEarth    Overview    1.International NGO Community       i) Public Relations and Media       ii) Networking Outreach       iii) Events & Presentations    2.Foundation and Funder Groups       i) Public Relations and Media       ii) Networking Outreach       iii) Events & Presentations    3.Students and Academic Institutions       i) Public Relations and Media       ii) Networking Outreach       iii) Events & Presentations Section 6 - Online Outreach

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Project Mission

To serve the global movement of people and organizations working toward social justice and environmental restoration by helping them to connect, collaborate, and build alliances.


What is WiserEarth?

WiserEarth is a community directory and networking forum for the hundreds of thousands of organizations addressing the central issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. WiserEarth helps these organizations locate each other, collaborate, share resources and build alliances.

WiserEarth is based upon six fundamental principles:

1. Transparency. WiserEarth is open and subject to full public scrutiny at all times.
2. Diversity. WiserEarth is based on respect for the uniqueness of human life and embraces all dimensions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, and religion.
3. Community. WiserEarth is owned and operated by its community. Content is free of copyright; all software is open source; all information can be repurposed and used by others.
4. Collaboration. WiserEarth shares information across geography, culture, and language. By working together, we become more intelligent and humane in our practices and more effective in our use of resources.
5. Networking. WiserEarth promotes and provides better connectivity between individuals, organizations, businesses, and governments. It will operate on all bandwidths and in most languages.
6. Visibility. WiserEarth allows the invisible to become known, the small to become seen, and the network to be mapped.

Why is WiserEarth needed?

The more than one million organizations and the one hundred million individuals who actively work towards ecological sustainability, economic justice, human rights, and political accountability work on issues that are systemically interconnected and intertwined. However, their effectiveness to prevent harm and institute positive change is undermined by the lack of a collective awareness, duplicative efforts, and poor connectivity. A widely diverse network of organizations is the best defense against injustice, but to be effective, it needs to be connected and intelligent. What is missing is a map and directory of this network that includes the resources for communication and cooperation, created and managed by the community; in essence, an infrastructure through which to coordinate our efforts.


Outreach & Messaging Strategy - Summary

Main Objectives

1. Communicate a clear and consistent message
2. Build awareness of WiserEarth globally, encouraging both new users and repeat visitors
3. Encourage the community to drive the site

Constituents (WHO)
The focus of our outreach efforts will be among 3 core groups:

1. The International NGO Community
2. Foundations and Donor Community
3. Students and Academic Community

We will also be addressing other audiences through our outreach efforts, including researchers, journalists, business professionals, government representatives etc, but these will not be our core audience.


Building Awareness & Participation (HOW)

1. Public Relations and Media. This will help support a strong public image of WiserEarth.org. Public relations activities will drive publicity in the media. E.g online public relations, press kit translated into multiple languages, new feature announcements etc.
2. Networking.  Emphasis will be placed on building relationships and partnerships with affinity and umbrella groups that have a network of constituents.
3. Events & Presentations. This will include face-to-face presentations to affinity groups, participation in events, as well as encouraging event organizers to use WE as an organizing tool before, during, and after events.
4. Online Outreach. This includes (but is not limited to) optimizing content on website itself, email campaigns & newsletters, search engine optimization, linking campaigns, social bookmarking, postings on blogs, chatrooms, forums, and more.

We will not conduct any paid advertising or carry out promotions that do not fit with our guiding principles.


WiserEarth’s Global Reach (WHERE)

WiserEarth’s community outreach strategy reflects our global reach. Our strategy begins with NCI staff and volunteers divided into regional teams charged with sharing WiserEarth with communities, at events, through online activities, and in the media in the following regions:

• Africa
• Asia/ South Pacific
• Latin America/Caribbean
• Europe/North America

Initially, NCI staff and interns will guide these regionally-focused efforts and over time recruit members of the WiserEarth community who have expressed interest in acting as regional point people.


Messaging (WHAT)

The focus of our messaging will be the following:
Join the WiserEarth community and:

• Find NGOs around the world by area of focus or geographic location
• Post your profile and connect with people in other regions doing similar work
• Stay current with what’s happening in your field
• Find and contribute resources, jobs, events, and connect with funders

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Section 2 - Communication Objectives

We have set 3 main objectives:

1. Communicate a clear and consistent message
2. Build awareness of WiserEarth globally, encouraging both new users and repeat visitors.
3. Encourage the community to drive the site

1. Communicate a clear and consistent message

Success to be measured by:

• Media and commentary clearly and consistently articulate positioning of WiserEarth
• Feedback from the community illustrates an understanding of WiserEarth’s positioning and benefits
• Market research studies among WiserEarth’s user base finds that audiences (non-profit and NGO representatives, community leaders and organizers, activists, funders, academics, and students) are being effectively reached and served.

2. Build awareness of WiserEarth globally, encouraging both new users and repeat visitors.

Success will be measured by:

Current...	As of June 1, 2007 - based on a 2 week rolling daily average	Objective by December 31st 2007
Number of Visits (daily)	741	6,000
Number of Page Views (daily)	6,184	30,000
Number of Page Views per visit (daily)	8	16
Number of New (unique) Visitors (daily)	482	1,600
% of US users vs % of International users	75% / 25% (111 countries)	50% / minimum of 50% of international users
Languages (website content)	English	Site translated into 5 additional languages for main web pages
Number of Repeat Visitors	120	2,400
Top Sources (organic & referral) & weekly visits generated (including search engines)	Direct: 2,320 Organic: 1,880 Referral: 993	Direct: 4,000 Organic: 8,000 Referral: 5,000

3. Encourage the community to drive the site

Success will be measured by:

Current...	As of June 1, 2007	Objective by December 31st 2007
Total Edits	143,986	300,000
Number of Profiles	602	10,000
Number of Organizations	102,937	150,000
Number of Resources	1,090	3,500
Number of Events	211	1000 events listed since launch
Number of Jobs	77	1000 jobs posted since launch
Accuracy of content (based on research sample of 1% of all orgs, resources, jobs, events)	98% (% accuracy)	95%

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Section 3 - Defining WiserEarth’s Constituents

We have segmented WiserEarth’s constituents into 4 main groups to allow us to better understand their needs and the ways WiserEarth can serve them. The 4 groups that will be reached through our communication activities are:

1. The International NGO Community
2. Foundations and Donor Community
3. Students and Academic Community
4. Other Constitutens
   

1. International NGO Community

This group includes representatives of non-governmental organizations worldwide, as well as individual grassroots activists working on specific campaigns/issues/projects. These individuals are both within and outside of the organizations in the WiserEarth database.

2. Foundations and donor community

This category emphasizes network groups of funders within the international community around either issues or regions. These entities pool resources and provide support to their members and can therefore mobilize and reach large numbers of constituents quickly and effectively.

3. Students and academic Community

These groups include both University and high-school student groups and associations, department heads, library directors, career center directors, youth directors and programs working to expand the field of philanthropy and knowledge of the nonprofit sector, both in the U.S and around the world.

4. Other Constituents

• Concerned Citizens
• Scholars/Researchers (incl. authors/professors)
• Experts (e.g. scientists, lawyers, doctors, engineers etc.) within specific areas of focus
• Media (journalists, film-makers)
• Business professionals
• Governmental employees and local government representatives

The needs of business professionals and government representatives will be met through the forthcoming WiserBusiness and WiserGovernment sections that will eventually compliment WiserEarth.

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Section 4 - Differences, Benefits And Positioning of WiserEarth

Differentiators

• WE includes the most comprehensive, editable and publicly available (free of cost) directory of organizations working on sustainability and social change in the world. More than 100,000 organizations at present.
• WE contains the world’s first detailed classification of the many areas in which organizations in the social justice and environmental field are working (46 areas of focus).
• WE encourages anyone to create or edit content, and provides opportunities for transparent feedback through a community-editable, structured wiki format with advanced search tools.
• WE contains re-usable, copyright free information and resources (copyleft).

 

Positioning

WiserEarth is a community directory and networking forum for the hundreds of thousands of organizations addressing the central issues of our day. WiserEarth helps these organizations locate each other, collaborate, share resources and build alliances.

 

Site ID/Tagline

 

"Toward a Just and Sustainable World Created by Community"


Benefits for Constitutent Segments

All audiences:

• Ability to find out quickly and easily ‘who’s working on what and where’
• Search the most extensive international directory of social justice and environmental organizations in the world ? over 100,000 organizations based in 243 countries, territories and sovereign islands
• Connect with people doing similar work
• Find and communicate with people based on interest area or geographic region
• Join in discussions
• “Visualize a network” and see connections and and empowers collaboration within or across affinities
• Invite people to work with you on projects
• Stay current with what’s happening in your field
• WE provides access to books, articles, podcasts, video, maps, research reports, educational opportunities and case studies?searchable by area of focus.
• WE will provide customizable calendars to notify users of events based on geographic region and areas of interest
• Contribute to your community
• Create, edit and improve content on WiserEarth (give feedback, edit organizational info, add/edit information within your area of interest, geographic region, add resources etc)
• Get involved with regional or community hubs, become a steward for WiserEarth

Additional Benefits for Constituent Segments

International NGO Community

• Visibility for your cause, your nonprofit/NGO
• Funders and other potential partners can locate you and see information about your organization. (Including contact details, areas of focus, mission statement, and program specifics). All organizations are represented in WiserEarth on an even playing field.
• Locate other groups around the world working on your cause - develop alliances, share your experiences, knowledge and resources
• Identify potential funding opportunities
• Find volunteers, interns or employees
• Reformat and reuse WiserEarth content on your organization’s website

Foundations and Funder Groups

• Share new funding opportunities and requests for proposals
• Better evaluate proposals and dockets by searching a free, international directory of thousands non-profit organizations
• Find volunteers, interns or employees
• Represent your funding network on WiserEarth and connect with other funding networks
• Share your foundation’s resources with grantees/potential grantees

Students and Academic Community

• Search a repository of research on sustainability-related organizations and resources
• Search through volunteer, intern or job opportunities in the non-profit sector around the world

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Section 5 - Building Awareness And Participation in wiserearth

Overview

This section discusses the specific ways in which NCI will drive awareness and usage among our three key constituents, namely:

1. The International NGO community
2. Foundations and Funder Groups
3. Student and Academic Community

For each constituent group, we will focus on geographic regions, engaging the NGOs, funders, students etc. in those regions. We will begin by assigning an NCI staff or intern to coordinate outreach in the following regions:

• Africa
• Asia/South Pacific
• Latin America/Caribbean
• Europe/North America

Overtime, we will expand these into “regional teams”, as NCI staff identify key volunteers and leadership in the region.

The strategy for building awareness among the constituent groups in these regions will focus principally on the following areas:

• Public Relations and Media
• Networking Outreach
• Events & Presentations

In addition to these three strategy areas, NCI will focus on a fourth strategy, Online Outreach. Because of the global nature of this task, online outreach will not be broken down by constituency or by region. Although some aspects of online outreach will extend into the regional strategies, NCI will have a specific staff person dedicated to online outreach.


1. International NGO Community

Public relations and media

i) Description: NGO Media Kits & Awareness Program

Objectives: Local, national, and regional (cross-national) press coverage of WiserEarth within our four targeted regions

Geographic Area Targeted: Global (4 regional teams: Africa, Asia/South Pacific, Latin America/Caribbean, Europe/North America)

Activities:

• Translate and tailor WiserEarth Media Kit for each region (WiserEarth media kit includes: one-page project description, three-page project description, WiserEarth press release, flyer, power-point presentation, NCI background sheet, list of WiserEarth’s media coverage)
• Send (multilingual) press releases to top 15 environmental and social justice publications in region announcing WiserEarth
• Send (multilingual) press releases to top 100 local, national, regional newspapers announcing WiserEarth

ii) Description: Electronic Outreach Awareness Program

Objectives: WE community members will easily communicate benefits of WE to their networks

Geographic Area Targeted; Global (electronic only--materials available for download and can be used as additional collateral for presentations, etc)

Activities:

• Translate/tailor components of WiserEarth media kit based on cultural specificity
• Share with key networks, event organizers, and individuals interested in promoting WiserEarth

iii) Description: WE on the Radio

Objectives: Coverage of WE on local, national, and regional (cross-national) radio stations within our four targeted regions

Geographic Area Targeted: Global, through the efforts of four regional teams: Africa, Asia/South Pacific, Latin America/Caribbean, Europe/North America

Activities:

• 3 radio interviews/segments per region
• Submit requests to radio producers for radio interview with Paul Hawken, Melinda Kramer or Peggy Duvette
• Develop basic WiserEarth introductory podcast to be downloadable from international podcast sites

iv) Description: WiserEarth.org URL on Business Cards, Flyers/Posters, Collateral & Stationery

Objectives: Passively promote WiserEarth through “word-of-mouth”

Geographic Area Targeted: Mostly USA

Activities:

• Stamp NCI business cards with WiserEarth.org and personal profile URL
• Ensure the URL appears in all other NCI collateral and communications (including email signatures)
• Develop WE banner to be used at exhibitor stands at events

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Section 6 - Online Outreach

The aim of the online outreach program is to develop awareness and generate visits to WiserEarth by encouraging word of mouth about the site and enabling it to be easily found by search engines.

Activities will include:

Tell a Friend campaign

• Implement a “Tell a friend” function, where a user is asked to invite 5 friends to join WiserEarth when they create a profile.

Site Content Optimization

• Track key performance indicators and visits to specific parts of the site using Google Analytics using Site Overlay tool to ensure that the site is optimized

- e.g. Ensure most popular content is included on the homepage and that sub-page content is optimized for users (e.g. entry pages will feature frequently used pages on site) - Include site testimonials – how people use the site when appropriate

   

• One person to continually monitor this information and feed back to web/comms team

Search Engine & Keyword Optimization

• Ensure WiserEarth is optimized in terms of keywords on top search engines: Google, Yahoo! And MSN
• Submit to top search engines (where needed)
• Develop Google site map

Keyword list – most relevant keywords with highest traffic volume over past 12 months (Google Keywords)

WiserEarth Wiser Earth Wiserearth WISER

Non-profit Non profit organizations Non profit organization Nonprofit organization Non profit Nonprofit

NGO Non-governmental organization International charity Charity organizations

• e.g. Include 4 primary keywords for optimization in 1st paragraph of home page
• Use same 4 keywords in ALT tags and part of link text
• Other keywords examples: directory, NGOs, Sustainability, Non-governmental organization, not-for-profit, charity, movement, community, network, social change, social justice, civil society, environment, environmental, environmentalism, open source, Wiser Earth, wiserearth, web 2.0, wiki etc.
• Select and identify top keywords to be used across the site using Google Keyword selection
• Review competitor sites to see keywords they use
• Work with tech team to optimize the site for Google, Yahoo! And MSN
• Apply to different languages & country searches as the site expands into other languages

Social Bookmarking & Community Directories

Ensure WiserEarth is optimized in terms of keywords on Social Bookmarking sites and social justice, environmental and community directories

• Identify social bookmarking sites (technorati, digg, de.lici.us etc) and ensure searches optimized for WiserEarth with appropriate keywords (see SEO keyword list)
• Create and update Wikipedia entry for WiserEarth.org
• Identify directories and ensure WiserEarth listed correctly with appropriate keywords
• Roll out to other languages as site expands into other languages

Chatrooms & Discussion Boards

• Track and monitor discussions relating to WiserEarth
• When appropriate, respond to comments relating to social justice and environmental discussions by referring users to WiserEarth.org and highlighting what it does (E.g. http://www.metafilter.com/61030/WiserEarth

Implement a Link Campaign

• In all communications, encourage users to ‘Link to WiserEarth’ from their own organization’s website
• Include button that can be downloaded and reused on other sites that want to link to WiserEarth.org
• Look for inbound links and run inbound link popularity report – research sources for free links and ensure relevancy for our target constituents

E-Newsletters & Updates (Opt-in)

• Build up an email list of users who want to receive updates based on changes on the site or other information such as event updates, What’s New etc.
• This list could be supplemented to by keeping a ‘Join the Email List’ at events
• Develop email newsletter for WiserEarth updates (including active orgs/networks)
• Encourage networking groups to send out news and updates on WiserEarth in their own email newsletter. E.g. new NGOs that have joined the community/area of focus/information changes/news on latest projects etc.
• Translate/disseminate email newsletters with updates and news on WiserEarth to key groups

Email Signature

• Welcome email to be sent to all new people that have registered on the site with password and username included – to be done instead of messaging
• Every email that is sent out from NCI to include the WiserEarth.org URL in the signatures

Blogging Community

• Research and participate in student blogs and social networking sites (MySpace, Facebook, Tribe etc.) and begin actively communicating about WiserEarth
• Post profiles from users of WiserEarth on social networking sites
• Contact bloggers to announce launch of WiserEarth, to notify them of functional updates as well as site stats
• Keep bloggers updated with what’s happening on WiserEarth with online press releases
• Comment on article written by bloggers by offering additional information
• Email bloggers asking them for a mention, ask for a link to the site, and thank them for their time and efforts (search techorati.com for blogs or Google Blog search)

PodCasts & Vodcasts

• Develop Podcasts & Vodcasts based on community activity on WiserEarth to appear on YouTube and other podcast sites to help promote WiserEarth
• Identify platforms where podcast & vodcast could be uploaded
• Create podcast/vodcast + upload to sites
• Create emailable link and include in future newsletters to users

Online Surveys & Research

• Review and create online surveys to get feedback from the community
• Develop email list of people within the community that are willing to be surveyed
• Enable members of the community to sign up as beta testers before a new piece of functionality is released

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