advocacy

Mobile Phones in Advocacy: MobileActive Guide #2 Released

February 20, 2007 | admin

file under:
advocacy, guides, strategy

MobileActive is announcing the second MobileActive Guide, profiling strategies and civil society organizations using mobile phones in their work to make the world a better place. The MobileActive Guide focuses on using mobile phones in issue advocacy. It features case studies from around the world, strategies for using mobile phones in advocacy work, and a how-to section for advocacy organizations considering using mobile phones to advance their causes.

Download the Guide here. (Log in required)

Mobile phones have become a powerful emerging tool for participation in civil society. This five part series looks ways nonprofits have used mobile phones in their campaigns and the effective strategies deployed, and shares lessons learned.

admin's blog

The DOs and DON’Ts of Mobile Advocacy

June 30, 2008 | KatrinVerclas

file under:
advocacy, mobile marketing, mobile phones, sms, social marketing

Mobile social marketing works in increasing awareness and moving people to actions. It is also becoming an effective way to engage users and constituents. Throughout our experience with mobile campaigns, we've run into the some great campaigns and some failures as well.

KatrinVerclas's blog

Txt4Choice: NARAL's Experiences with Mobile Advocacy

June 27, 2008 | CorinneRamey

file under:
advocacy, choice, infoline, mobile, naral, reproductive health, sms, text-to-screen, verizon, women

Curious how your state ranks on reproductive choice? NARAL Pro-Choice America makes it easy to find out. By texting the word "grade" and the abbreviation of your state to a short code, you get an almost-instantaneous text response with your state's grade and opportunities for more information. "One of the reasons we decided to invest in mobile technology is we want to diversify how we're communicating with people," said Kristin Koch, Deputy Director of Communications at NARAL. NARAL recently began a mobile program -- they're calling it Txt4Choice -- and has been exploring how to use mobile in ways that compliment and integrate into their already developed communications strategy.

CorinneRamey's blog

What can you do with a mobile? Case studies from Advocacy, Service Delivery, and Fundraising

June 27, 2008 | CorinneRamey

file under:
advocacy, case studies, fundraising, human services, mobile advocacy, mobile phones, sms, social impact

Note: This primer was written for the NTEN newsletter, targeted at a US audience and thus focuses on America. For more on mobile advocacy in many other parts of the world, see here.

CorinneRamey's blog

Mobile Advocacy: A Primer

June 25, 2008 | CorinneRamey

file under:
advocacy, cell phone, m-advocacy, mobile advocacy, ringtones, sms, United States

Note: This primer was written for the NTEN newsletter, targeted at a US audience and thus focuses on America. For more on mobile advocacy in many other parts of the world, see here.

CorinneRamey's blog

MobileActive.org Releases 'How to Use Mobile for Polling and Engagement'

June 23, 2008 | CorinneRamey

file under:
advocacy, kenya, mobile engagement, mobile polling, polling, sms

MobileActive releases the newest addition to our growing resource hub: Mobile Phones for Polling and Engagement.

Polling via SMS can be a unique way to engage current supporters and attract new audiences. Polls can ask any number of questions, from opinions about an organization to views on a controversial issue. However, perhaps the most valuable aspect of polling isn’t the feedback that organizations receive directly from a poll, but rather the relationships with constituents and growing mobile support base that polls can help build.

Organizations engage in mobile polling for two reasons:

to generate a list of mobile numbers to use for future communications and engagement
to get an informal sense of constituent views for use on an organization's web site, for generating media coverage, and learn more about a particular segment of its constituency.

Mobile Phones for Polling and Engagement includes a case study of polls conducted by Media Focus on Africa (MFAF) as part of their Election Assistance Campaign, which sought to promote civic participation and discussion of political issues prior to the December 2007 Kenyan elections. Through SMS polling, MFAF asked its constituents some tough questions.

Should politicians accused of corruption be prevented from vying for political seats? Is tribal identity more dominant than the identity of being a Kenyan? Can voting still deliver credible results after the chaotic party nominations and bribery?

The questions were advertised on television, radio shows, and newspaper advertisements. Thousands of Kenyans responded to the polls via SMS on their mobile phones, helping to bring issues of voting and civic participation into the national conversation.

CorinneRamey's blog

American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network

file under:
activism, advocacy, cancer, Health and Medicine, healthcare, Politics, Voting, Democracy, and Civic Engagement

operates in:
United States

contact:

http://www.acscan.org/
Inquiries may be submitted via www.acscan.org/feedback

ACS CAN provides action alerts, event information, localized content and important legislative information via SMS/Text to individuals interested in cancer advocacy issues. Constituents are also urged to sign petitions via SMS Text.

Current projects include mobile messaging as part of a nation-wide bus tour focusing on access to quality healthcare. Visit www.acscan.org/bus for more information.

References / Past Projects

ACS CAN is the nation’s leading cancer advocacy organization that is working every day to make cancer issues a national priority.

ACS CAN empowers regular people to be part of the growing national movement that is fighting back against cancer.

ACS CAN, the non-profit, non-partisan sister advocacy organization of the American Cancer Society, is holding lawmakers accountable for their words and their actions.

BungeSMS

file under:
advocacy, fahamu, government, kenya, sms, Voting, Democracy, and Civic Engagement

operates in:
Kenya

contact:
http://www.bungesms.com/

From the BungeSMS website:

Bunge SMS is a mobile phone based service by Made in Kenya Network that combines the internet and mobile telephony with the aim of Empowering every Kenyan to influence Local Governance in their Constituencies.

You can report corruption and environmental degradation, influence constituency project choices and monitor development activities.

Send an SMS to 3454 and tell your Member of Parliamnet what he or she must do for YOU.

Demand your share of funds - such as:

References / Past Projects

Bunge SMS is a mobile phone based campaign by Made in Kenya Network that combines the internet and mobile telephony with the aim of Empowering every Kenyan to influence Local Governance in their Constituencies.

The Bunge SMS campaign is also part of the testing of the Mobile Advocacy Toolkit developed by Tactical Technology collective in collaboration with Fahamu. The Toolkit was developed based on input members of the PanAfrican Mobile Activists Network (PAMONet).

The testing of the Mobile Advocacy Toolkit is conducted courtesy of financial support from Hivos and Fahamu.

Dialup Radio

file under:
advocacy, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), IVR, radio

operates in:
United States

contact:
http://www.dialupradio.org/

Dialup Radio is a tool that distributes human rights and independent media via telephone. Brief radio-style audio files are uploaded and managed via the Dialup Radio website. These files are immediately available to callers who phone the project phone number. Our software automatically generates interactive voice response (IVR) menus that enable callers to naviage audio content using their telephone keypads. Dialup radio works with any telephone, and can be adopted for a variety of activist campaigns.

Dialup Radio has been designed specifically to meet the needs of human rights activists in the developing world.

References / Past Projects

Project History
Dialup Radio was first conceived in the spring of 2006. An initial prototype was completed later that year. Initial testing and ongoing collaboration with human rights activists have lead to further refinements. A pilot deployment is anticipated for summer 2007.

Technology
Dialup Radio consists of a web-based content management system written in Ruby/Rails, and an Asterisk-based telephony server. All software is open-source, and will be released to the public in the fall of 2008.

Contact
For additional information, please contact tad at media dot mit dot edu.

Mobile phones and new media in pro-Tibet protests

August 11, 2007 | John.L.German

file under:
activism, advocacy, blogging, censorship, mobile phones, mobileactive, technology, video

Of the hundreds of mainstream-media news stories around the world on Wednesday August 8, 2007, about the pro-Tibet protest in China this week, the one copied below focused on the role of information and communication technologies in a compelling, vivid, and memorable way.

I hope that readers will know where this story could be taken and how it could be highlighted and used to maximum effect as an example of outstanding innovative use of free new-media tools to achieve social change -- feel free to do that, or let me know what should be done.

John.L.German's blog

Brawling over Ringtones

June 1, 2006 | Joshua Shimkin

file under:
advocacy, politics, ringtones

(First posted at EchoDitto on May 11, 2006)

I've been spending some significant time making ringtones for clients over the last two weeks. We've seen this ringtone wave coming for a while now given that 23% of American mobile phone owners (30 million Americans) downloaded a ring tone between August 2004 and 2005. Internationally, mobile phones will soon outpace computers as the dominant way to access the internet, so customizing a ringtone will soon be common.

Don't just take my word for it. Seth Godin, famous author and top blogger of strategic marketing, thinks ringtones are going to explode: