The Tip Jar – 5/13/07

Welcome to the Mother’s Day edition of the Tip Jar. I was awoken at 6:20 this morning by my sweet and well-meaning son bringing me a bowl of Fiber One cereal and milk balanced on a paper plate for breakfast in bed. I swallowed down as much of the cardboard-flavored cereal as I could and went back to sleep. The day only got better from there. I hope the rest of you mothers had as wonderful a Mothers Day as I did.

I missed a week or so of blogging while my sister and her family visited from Israel (they were supposed to come in April, but the baby got chicken pox just before the flight). They stayed in my office, so I didn’t have as much access to my computer, but I did get more sleep than usual. Funny how that worked out.

Here are some of the things I am catching up on blogging about:

• The Wall Street Journal wrote about how the town of Somerville, Massachusetts has attacked child obesity with a community-wide transformation (see text of article here under 5/10/07 entry). Researchers at Tufts focused on changing the environment in which children make their eating and physical activity choices. They repainted crosswalks and deployed school crossing guards along a designated route, which resulted in a 5% increase in the number of children who walk to school. The schools changed the freshness and fiber content of the foods they offered. Teachers taught a nutrition and exercise curriculum designed by Tufts that included things like taste tests and healthy recipe contests. Beyond the schools, restaurants offered low-fat substitutes and smaller portions, the City sponsored health fairs, a pedometer giveaway and a community fun run, and other activities. After eight months of the program, the average Somerville second grader gained about one less pound than a similar child at schools in the control communities. It’s a modest start, but over time could add up to a big difference.

• Also in the WSJ is an article about how organizations can now offer their own branded cellphone service. For example, the National Wildlife Federation mobile service includes nature sound ringtones, updates on environmental news, and eventually will connect users with their political representatives with the touch of a button. Nearly 900 organizations have signed up with Sonopia to create their own service with customized features for their constituents. This could also be used, for example, to provide people with diabetes a comprehensive service to track their blood sugar, receive testing and medication reminders, communicate with diabetes specialists and even get ringtones like “Sugar, Sugar” or “Hit Me with your Best Shot” (groan).

• A couple of interesting things from Anastasia at Ypulse: The Rescue Social Change Group takes a influencer-based angle on promoting substance-free parties by identifying the cool kids who are the biggest partiers and getting them to host huge, hip alcohol- and smoke-free parties sponsored by the campaign. She also reports that teen virtual world Habbo Hotel is teaming up with Sexwise, a free confidential hotline for UK teens, on the RU Thinking campaign. Trained advisors will be offering group and one-on-one relationship advice sessions within the Habbo world over the next three months.

• Heather at Aspiration provides an overview of GIS mapping software for nonprofits, with an excellent guide to resources for mapping data at the local level to assist with planning interventions.

• There’s another new social issue social networking community out there called Spangy. Their twist is that the site breaks its communities into five age groups, with customized information geared towards the key interests of each age (e.g., the section for ages 30-44 focuses more on issues like child and family health and ages 60-74 focuses on leaving a legacy through areas like microfinance and building community infrastructure). Beyond that customization, I’m not sure how much it differs from something like Change.org or Zaadz.

• The MPAA has decided to include smoking among the criteria it uses to determine a movie’s rating. Though many anti-tobacco groups had been lobbying for an automatic R rating (which prevents children under age 17 from being admitted to a movie without a parent) whenever any smoking is depicted, the MPAA will take context into consideration in the rating. They will ask three questions to determine whether smoking is an issue: (1) Is the smoking pervasive? (2) Does the film glamorize smoking? and (3) Is there an historic or other mitigating context? To me, question number 2 is the crux of whether the depiction of smoking is harmful, and I think this policy makes sense.

• Philanthropy Journal held a bumper sticker contest for nonprofits. Take a look at the winners and entrants to get a sense of what is most effective (and what absolutely does not work) in this format. Short, simple and easy to read are all key criteria. Avoid packing in lots of text and graphics, and avoid the temptation to use acronyms that make your message cryptic to all but those who are already familiar with your organization.

• Fard Johnmar is going to be offering a series of virtual workshops for healthcare professionals on using social media, based on his excellent e-book From Command & Control to Engage & Encourage. Each workshop is an opportunity to engage with Fard in an intimate setting, with no more than 10 participants. If you’ve been wanting to figure out how to put social media principles into practice in your healthcare organization, Fard’s your man.

• I’m a little late on reporting this, but Nancy Schwartz has released the results of her survey of nearly 350 nonprofit communicators. The results were pretty dismal in terms of how respondents are using marketing in any kind of strategic way. Only 37% do any type of tracking of the impact of their marketing efforts, though 95% reported at least one significant marketing success (but how did they know it was successful if they weren’t tracking it?). It sounds like many organizations are groping in the dark, trying to get the word out about themselves without much of a strategic plan for how to do so.

• Names are destiny, as well as a form of branding. For future mothers- (and fathers)-to-be, keep in mind that the name you give your baby will affect how he or she and others perceive him or herself. A recent study shows that girls who are given very feminine names are less likely to study math or physics after age 16 than those with more gender-neutral names. Also, certain types of names are perceived as “lower-status,” such as those spelled in an unusual way or including punctuation, resulting in lowered expectations by teachers. More traditional names also tend to evoke images of success, popularity or kindness over alternative names that are not as common. Of course, a child is not a product, but be kind and think through all the emotional and professional implications of the names that will be attached to your children throughout their lives (says the girl whose name is only pronounced correctly 40% of the time).

• And on a final Mother’s Day note, Salary.com calculated that the work that a typical stay-at-home mom does is worth $138,095 a year, and a full-time working mom would earn an additional $85,939 for the work she does at home. That’s for our roles as housekeeper, cook, day care center teacher, laundry machine operator, van driver, facilities manager, janitor, computer operator, CEO and psychologist. You can calculate exactly how much your work would be compensated with this online tool. But as any mom will tell you, the love we get back is worth way more than any dollar amount.

Here’s to all the moms reading this – remember that the hard work is worth it!

Photo Credit: sealine76