webinar hosted by
Presented by Peter Deitz
Social Actions, founder
www.socialactions.com

What are widgets and why do About Me
they matter? I am a micro-
philanthropy
Sprout gallery: Five nonprofit consultant
widgets that use Sprout and blogger based in
Montreal, Quebec.
SproutBuilder 101: How to create
When I’m not consulting or
and promote a nonprofit widget blogging, I run a website
called Social Actions.
Three tips for integrating Sprout
Social Actions helps people
in your nonprofit’s work find, support, and start
their own peer-to-peer
social change campaigns.

Widgets help your nonprofit
reach people where they are.

“Widgets Are the Bumper
Stickers of the Internet”
“Widgets are the keys to social networks.
If you want to go where the world is, use
widgets.” -Snipperoo.com
A widget is an online tool that permits a portion of
one webpage to appear on other webpages. These
appearances look exactly the same and can be
updated from a single source.

Fundraising News Weather Advertising
Widgets Widgets Widgets Widgets

They allow you to have a
presence where the people are
They permit individuals to
demonstrate support for your
organization
Unlike bumper stickers, they
SproutBuilder’s template
are dynamic and interactive for a “Cause” widget
They can pack a lot of
information in a little space
They are cost effective way

Non-technical staff
can create rich
media widgets
Once they are
launched, you can
update all of them
from a single
“This is far and away my favorite product control panel.
I've seen at DEMO, not just this year but You can track
ever in the three years I've attended.” where they appear
and how people
-Marshall Kirkpatrick, ReadWriteWeb
use them.

Five nonprofit widgets that use
Sprout

Every Human Nonprofit Technology
Has Rights Conference 2008
KaTREEna
Plantometer
The Niapele Project $40 for 40 Years of
Fair Housing

“Page 1” “Page 2” “Page 3”

Note: This kind of
functionality probably
requires support from
your tech department.
1) Find the widget
2) Read the request
3) Sign the petition

Home
Agenda
NTEN official blog
08NTC blog entries
Twitter feed (“tweets”)
Flickr photo feed
DoGooderTV
Nonprofit Video Award

“We posted it on my personal blog, on
our organization's blog, and the org
website, and then sent out a mass
email to our base to encourage them to
visit these sites.
“On the blogs, we wrote more detailed
posts alongside the Sprout to describe
this specific fundraising drive.
“It took us 10 days to reach our goal.”
-Penelope Chester
Niapele Project

Homepage About us Donate
Support us Blog

How to create and promote a
nonprofit widget using Sprout

Step 1:
Step 2:

Flip between
“pages” of your
Sprout, including
master foreground
and background
pages
Add components, such as a calendar,
countdown clock, progress bar, news feed,
video, images, or a third party plugins.

Using the “properties” panel, you can change
the text of a button, redirect the link, and
setup click tracking.
Editing text is as simple
as using Microsoft Word.

The “projects” tab contains links
to all of your active sprouts
After you “publish” changes, all of your
active Sprouts will be updated.

These tips will help you get your
nonprofit message out (in tact).

Tip #1 of 3
Line up partners to promote your Sprout(s)
Widgets allow for seamless
Other
collaboration across organizations. orgs
Blogs
Ask bloggers to embed your
widget in a post, or in their
sidebar.
Highly
Identify several highly trafficked trafficked
websites to feature your widget. sites
Ask supporters to post your Social
widget on their social networking Networks
profiles

Tip #2 of 3
Make one widget for your nonprofit and one per project
Once you get the hang of creating Sprouts, you will want to
create a widget per project. Since these widgets are easy to
create, quick to update, and incredibly versatile, there’s no
reason not to.

Tip #3 of 3
Track your Sprouts and keep them updated
vs.
Long after you put your widgets into the world, they will
need your attention. Treat your Sprout(s) as if they were
the frontpage of your website, but broken into many pieces
and distributed across the web.

Peter Deitz
Social Actions
www.socialactions.com
peterdeitz@gmail.com
514-907-8725 – Montreal
718-766-5367 – New York City