JAMing: Multiple Entry Points To One Discussion

The whole concept of online marketing and fundraising is to get as many people involved as possible. Most organizations have one Web site and one entrance to online discussion.

Everyone knows to keep their home page updated with announcements about upcoming events or initiatives. A growing trend is to engage visitors to leave comments on discussion boards within the site or to encourage other sites or bloggers to pick up your story and continue the discussion on their sites.

You can get into Disney World from a couple of different points around the theme park. How many points should there be for discussion on a nonprofit's Web site?

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The benefits of other people talking about your cause online are obvious. Readers learn about what you do and ideally what action they should take -- whether it's to learn something, attend an event, or donate. Risks include posters getting facts wrong or creating objectionable content. Likewise, tracking links through multiple environments is a headache.

Worse, distributing participation across many different environments can make the discussion look too thin on any one site. Getting 100 people to post on one of your issues is good, but if it's made up of 10 different sites visitors to any one may just see the 10 there and not see the other 90. Links can help, but they don't always indicate the level of engagement you'd like.

The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History is trying a new approach to building cross-site participation in online discussions to promote April as Jazz Appreciation Month or JAM. Launched in 2001, the organization has since grown to include celebrations in all 50 states and 20 other countries.

Partnering with the social issue and activism site Care2.com, the Smithsonian is sharing a discussion space across the two systems. "Americans invented jazz, but it has become an international language that bridges cultures and brings together different types of people," said Brent D. Glass, director of the National Museum of American History. "So it is especially fitting that this new discussion board brings people from multiple Web communities together, for an inclusive conversation about the world's most inclusive music."

Care2 has been described as the "MySpace or FaceBook for grownups" and allows members to interact with other socially conscious individuals, as well as to find and support causes and nonprofit organizations. Care2 currently has 250 nonprofit partners and 6 million individual members.Care2 gets its money from its nonprofit partners, who pay a fee based on the number of Care2 members who sign up for the NPO email list or who click through ads on the Care2 site.

Participants in the unified online discussion can join the conversation either from Care2's Web site at www.care2.com/c2c/group/smithsonianjazz or from the Smithsonian's site at www.smithsonianjazz.org. Special guest bloggers, including jazz musicians and leading jazz experts, will also participate during the month. In addition, a third and possibly fourth Web community may join the discussion, widening the circle of participants even further.

Discussions on each site maintain their own URL so that visitors from Care2 will stay in Care2.com and those who connected through the Smithsonian will continue to see the Smithsonianjazz.org address.

However, content in one site will be immediately available on the other. Page layout conforms to the host page -- the format of the discussions changes based on the URL. Moderators at either site can delete messages posted to their pages as well as blocking postings from originating from other sites. There is a link on the Care2 page to take readers to the JAM page. The Smithsonian page shows a "powered by Care2.com" link that takes you to an "about us" page at Care2.

In the first 10 days of operation the shared discussion site generated 10 topics and approximately 50 posts ranging from "Best Places to Listen to Jazz" to "Random Acts of Jazz Poetry." While it is too early to tell if consolidated discussion boards are an effective way to build awareness of a topic it is an innovative way to simulcast content across multiple Web sites.