Social Media power in NCIV

          The National Council for International Visitors (NCIV) is a nonprofit membership association with 50 years of leadership in citizen diplomacy.

NCIV serves the international exchange community and helps build person-to-person relationships "one handshake at a time."  NCIV membership includes a nationwide network of Community Member Organizations, National Program Agencies, Associate Member Organizations, and individuals.  NCIV members design and implement professional programs, provide cultural activities, and offer home hospitality for foreign leaders, specialists, and scholars participating in the U.S. Department of State International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) and other exchanges.  With leadership and training provided by NCIV, member organizations are expert at matching the resources of their communities with the needs of International Visitors.

I have attended the 2012 national annual meeting and experienced the different social media power to promote the meeting. NCIV not only did a good job in planning the sessions, but also played a leading role to energize, support and embrace the groundswell.

Energizing: NCIV encouraged enthusiastic members to post and comment.
Supporting: NCIV provide instruction sheets on Twitter.
Embracing: NCIV create Emerging Leading Program and use young students' social media                 competence to reach out more young people and promote citizen diplomacy.

 

Official Website

 

When logging in NCIV official website, there are some rolling new of upcoming activities. Living Our Story: The 2013 NCIV National Meeting is on the first. And there are corresponding description of each session and documentation for Pre-Meeting Workshops and some of the sessions. 

Although all social media tools are available for both business and nonprofit, there are difference in the ways to approach them. Business are more likely to put more resource and energy to the tools which will have a direct impact on customers and have the potential benefit of increasing sales. While in the nonprofit, more members are driven by the personal attachment with organizational mission instead of advertisement. Lack of staff is often seen in the nonprofit sector, more human labor would be put into more effective committees, such as programming, strategic plan and finance. The mostly used and update social media tool would be the office website. 

 It is also true for the organization where I started work 5 month ago, the International Center of Worcester. Although we have Facebook and Twitter, it was not usually updated until I took the initiative to post on Facebook. The only social media tool that can contain most of organizational information is the official website which has the record of all the programs throughout the years and hasn't updated recently. I have been working as a Program Coordinator for 3 month and you still could not see my picture in the organizational structure. It is understandable that our webmaster is a volunteer. Since we have been busy with all the programs and reports, there would not be such a problem if the website is not keep pace up with the recent activities.

 

Videos

Sound and image are always good format for promotion.

Michelle Kwan, the most decorated figure skater in U.S. history and the first U.S. Public Diplomacy Envoy, shared her experience and influenced people with her athlete charm. Michelle Kwan gave two speeches in the meeting and this video played twice. The celebrity effect has always played an important role, especially in the nonprofit sector. 

 

Mr. Michael Mabwe, the National Coordinator, Zimbabwe United States of America Alumni Association (ZUSAA), as an international visitor who attended the “Promoting Tolerance through Arts” IVLP in 2008, he applied the best practices that he saw in the United States to his organization, Zimbabwe Poets for Human Rights. NCIV planning committee recorded Mr. Micheal's opening poem in the meeting.

 

 

Twitter

On the Opening Plenary Session, there were twitter sheet instructions that let people tweet after Michelle Kwan for #ExpandYourWorld. And the Planning Committee offered  follow up instructions for the IVLP Network in the coming days as well.

During breakfast and lunch sessions, the host would read more of the tweets and encouraged people to tweets #LivingNCIV.

 

 Emerging Leaders

Besides senior and experienced staff members, there were some young student interns attending the annual meeting as Emerging Leaders. These young students are more familiar with social media sites and had smart phones which can keep up with the latest activities. Some of them post pictures on their Facebook and transfer Citizen Diplomacy to a younger generation which has a more profound meaning. I am honored to be one of them and here are some of the pictures.

 

After the conference, we create NCIV Emerging Leaders Alumni on Facebook. 

It is our pleasure to meet friend who share the same interest and we all wish each other a bright future. Although we know that there might be no chance for us to meet, but thanks to the social network, we can be friends during our whole life.