It’s a great time to be in foundation communications, with new platforms and tools allowing us to promote knowledge sharing and community building, ideas central to Carnegie Corporation’s mission, as never before. But with new possibilities springing up every day that are so tempting to jump into and experiment with (today I’m looking at Cinematique touch video and Poetica shared editing), it’s especially important for those of us at nonprofits with limited bandwidth to selectively utilize those channels that maximize impact—those that are a good fit for our content, that encourage interaction with the audiences we want to engage, and which we can effectively manage.
What does that mean in today’s vast and constantly changing social and new media world? Shelley Bernstein, Vice Director for Digital Engagement & Technology at the Brooklyn Museum, reminds us: it means continually reassessing where we are and what we do… and most importantly, making the tough decisions to choose what not to do.
For a refreshingly honest, inside view of why the Brooklyn Museum is leaving Flickr and iTunesU, where they’re going with Tumblr and more, read Shelley’s piece “Social Change.” The importance of transparency that allows us to learn from each other—in this case, about ever-evolving engagement goals—is something we’ll be keeping in mind here at the Corporation as we overhaul our website, our content strategies, our branding narrative and voice, and more in the coming months. Stay tuned!