Voting Procedure for Non-Profit Partnership Contest

In case you don’t know about it, you can read the overview here and see the list of contestants here.

Tess came up with the idea at our first meeting two months ago. It was wonderfully received, and we (volunteers!) have put this together in full homage to the concept of “on a wing and a prayer.” The interest has been outstanding and it is now time to let the community decide who will be selected. By the way, we think all entries can be winners, as our process of help will be very open for all to follow along and learn with us!

Your vote counts. We are looking for the candidate who will walk the talk with us through the six months, who is not yet using social media very much, and who will truly benefit from our assistance.

UPDATE May 8th, 12 noon
Five days ago we had two entries. We were concerned about not having enough participation. So we decided to leave it open until the very last moment – Friday 5:30 pm May 8th. We also figured we would have the vote among those present at the meeting. We have been getting over 50 people at each event, and that seemed like a fair representation.

Then something happened! The word spread on the social web and we now have 15 entries with over 5 hours yet to go. 50 people voting with 15 choices is not very good math for creating a consensus. So we decided to open it up to internet voting. This would not only allow the larger community to vote, but also to get engaged with us (a key principle of social media) and thereby help expand the awareness of each of these outstanding organizations who have applied. (Free buzz is another social media strength.)

However that left out the live attendees, many of whom will not have a laptop. If we changed the settings on the poll, to allow several people to vote from one laptop, that would make cheating much more possible, and skew the results unfairly (if it happened). So the next principle here is that technology is wonderful and, it can be punk’d.

So now with Shane’s encouragement and recommendation, we have decided to go with the flow!

• We are going to post a short video of each nonprofit (recorded at the meeting tonight) and give them even more buzz.
• We are going to open up the voting for a longer time period to allow plenty of time for people to check out each organization and make an informed decision
• We will forego announcing the winner tonight, and instead will announce it in 10-14 days with great fanfare! In the meantime, this will give us all plenty of time (including traditional media) to learn about the program and make the most of it for all! (In addition to the entries still coming in, we have sponsors who want to be involved and we are working those details out today.)
• Please review all of the entries in advance – and remember, there may be some last minute ones posted late on Friday May 8th.
• Join us live at the meeting or via live stream here to see the short presentations given by each non-profit.
• Voting will be here on this site from 6:00 am HST Mon May 11th through 11:59 pm Mon May 18th. Check your time zone here. (We need time to get the videos posted.)
• Please follow us on Twitter @smchi to get the most up to date results and also check this blog frequently!
• Please tag your comments and blog posts with our tag “#smchi” so we can track your content and include it here.

All procedures are subject to change based on real time events! (Stay tuned!)