CauseWired: You Are What You Support?
- Posted by Steve K. on June 11th, 2009 filed in CauseWired, Internet
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One of the significant insights in Tom Watson’s book, CauseWired: Plugging In, Getting Involved, Changing the World, is the shift toward the causes a person supports becoming more and more a part of that person’s online (and offline?) identity. Watson writes:
“For today’s super-wired, always-on, live-life-in-public young Americans, the causes you support define who you are. …
“Sites such as Kiva, MySpace, LinkedIn, DonorsChoose, Change.org, and Facebook hold the promise of connecting social enterpreneurship with mass markets of consumers—of linking the motivation behind philanthropy with the aspiration to bring about change. The result may change how developed societies come to view charity and causes—particularly as young people begin to ‘wear’ their causes as public manifestations of their personalities, like clothing and music.”
Cause Networking
As the role of causes in people’s identity development grows, there’s also a growing movement being dubbed “cause networking.” I first heard this term on a conference call last year with former Yahoo! Chief Solutions Officer Tim Sanders. Sanders, who touts the role of causes in corporate environments, predicted, “‘Cause networking’ is what comes next after ’social networking.’” Or, in other words, after people connect online with the people they know, they are beginning to connect with people they don’t know but who share common interests, especially around causes.
Status Stories
The folks at Trendwatching had a briefing in April 2008 on a related topic: Status Stories:
“As more brands (have to) go niche and therefore tell stories that aren’t known to the masses, and as experiences and non-consumption-related expenditures take over from physical (and more visible) status symbols, consumers will increasingly have to tell each other stories to achieve a status dividend from their purchases. Expect a shift from brands telling a story, to brands helping consumers tell status-yielding stories to other consumers.”
I would translate this for the non-profit world:
“As more organizations (have to) go niche and therefore tell stories that aren’t known to the masses, and as experiences and non-consumption-related expenditures take over from physical (and more visible) status symbols, supporters will increasingly have to tell each other stories to achieve a status dividend from their support. Expect a shift from organizations telling a story, to organizations helping supporters tell status-yielding stories to other supporters.”
Is This Good or Bad?
In a discussion at lunch today with my communication colleague Claude Kennedy, he was lamenting how the USAmerican church population no longer seems to financially support mission work solely out of a sense of biblical obedience (e.g., “the Bible says to give, and so we give”). Claude was arguing that this biblical motivation has been instead replaced by a “selfish” motivation of giving to causes that make one feel better about themselves, enhance their “status”/identity, etc. Sounds a lot like what we’re talking about here, doesn’t it?
I would just say that of course this isn’t all good, but it’s not all bad either. I think the biblical motivation to participate in God’s mission (whether by praying, giving, or going) is not as dead as some might suggest. A recent report* in Christianity Today, for example, had some relatively good news for non-profits in regards to giving.
I think the bottom line is that this shift—to “cause networking” and having our online identities increasingly shaped by the causes we support—is a reality that organizations need to recognize and decide how they are going to respond. As always, I think there’s always great opportunities to “describe God’s might works,” and, in telling those stories, to have our own stories (and the stories of those we encounter through our work) shaped and formed in positive ways.
*Of course, other, broader reports are not so positive!
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