Quiet Laughing at Myself

Saturday, November 12, 2011

by Mark Beckwith

So all the rage at the moment is this Internet popularity contest du jour, this time put on by Chase Community Giving.  Nevus Outreach is endorsing this effort.

I routinely ask questions, for instance, when fending off the $250,000 Pepsi Challenge last year, like "how many times is someone going to click around on the internet to vote for you (and fill out forms and click ‘I agree’) before they just don't do it anymore?"

"Are we crying WOLF?"

Then someone told me Chase was harvesting the voters’ personal information and it just made my blood boil.  Don’t you hate it when someone says ‘please vote for my baby in the Cute Baby Contest’ and it turns out first you have to register, create a username and password, enter your real name, address, email address, telephone number … so what you thought was just a “click here” wound up sucking 8-10 minutes of your life AND putting you on another junk email list?

Just because you were trying to help??

I know *I* hate it.  Then, are you upset at the glossy corporate website, or are you miffed at the well-meaning-but-misguided person (friend) who sent you there?  Are you inclined to make that mistake a second time?  Do you look at everything this friend sends you suspiciously from that moment on?

What we don’t want is a bunch of people upset at Nevus Outreach just because we cried WOLF one time too often.  It’s important to call thousands of people to action only when it will actually do something.

Some years ago the Nevus Outreach staff gave me a stuffed Eeyore because they couldn’t find the words to tell me how they really felt.  This back-fired on them.  I was honored!  My Eeyore and I have navigated many nevus-obstacles where a little skepticism has shielded our organization from failure.

Eeyore says: "Oh bother."

But I digress.  Back to my story.  The Chase Community Giving thing has taken on a total life of its own, and everyone I know has been after me to quit being such a curmudgeon. 

So last night I went over there, checked it out, and voted.  Wow!  It was painless.  The joke is on me!  If you're logged in to Facebook, then when you click this link, all you have to do is click "VOTE."  That’s refreshing.  If you're not logged in, it makes you log in to Facebook before you can vote.  If you're not on Facebook then I don't know what happens to you.  (Some brave soul report back, please).

Not only that, but with this Chase Community Giving deal, they are giving away a LOT of money ($3.2M) to a LOT of organizations (100).  Nevus Outreach actually qualifies (less than $1M annual revenue).  Nevus Outreach has been positioned to win a $25K award since this campaign started, kudos to Amanda Underhill, Megan Fields and all our other peeps who have been fanning the flames.

Monday November 14 at 5:15pm we have 375 votes and are dead last at 100th place.

Sunday November 13 at 5:00am we have 331 votes (good job everyone@!) but we are not on the leader board, but the organization in 100th place has 255 votes.  I suspect they are not updating the leaderboard, or maybe our burst of activity looks suspicious and they are reviewing it.

Saturday November 12 at 4:00pm we have 251 votes and we are ranked 96^th out of 100.

So.  Eeyore and I are paying attention to this one.  We hope you will, too.  Go vote.  Tell your friends.  Watch the leader board and do what you can to keep us moving up!

Thanks for reading.  Have a good weekend.