Webinar Recap: Foundations and Online Collaboration

Forum One hosted a webinar on June 23 on online collaboration for philanthropic organizations. You can follow the one-hour archived session (or the slides on Slideshare) to get a nice slice of perspective from Amy Gipson of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Melissa Schoen of the California Healthcare Foundation.

Amy talked about a private global online community of librarians that she facilitates as part of the Gates Foundation's Global Libraries program. Melissa spoke on the Community Clinic Voice, a network of safety-net healthcare clinic managers based primarily in California. The two communities have interesting similarities and some striking differences.

A few takeaways:

• Know your audience well: Amy's community of global librarians and Melissa's community of safety-net health clinic managers has the perfect profile for successful online interaction: They are collaborative by nature, love to share information, and have a great need for information. This audience profile is a key driver of community success.
• To brand or not to brand: For very good reasons, the Gates Foundation's Global Libraries community is a private environment for foundation grantees only, and takes place very much in the context of grantees' relationships with their funder. The Community Clinic Voice was originally a grantee community and evolved to become a more independent entity with its own brand. So funders interested in seeding collaboration in the sectors they care about have an interesting question to face: Do they want to host the conversation themselves, or enable other organizations to do the hosting?
• Content is still king: Amy pointed out that one of the key drivers of community engagement is the information that's available to participants. Melissa reported that, while a recent community redesign did increase traffic to the Community Clinic Voice site, it is in fact the good information and connections on that site that ultimately make it most valuable.

Lots more good stuff there. Check out the session or watch the slides below! The conversation provides some great examples relevant to our ongoing series on Collaboration for Funders.

Go here to view the archived webinar (audio and visual)