[Editor's note: The following is from the December 2012 issue of NTEN:Change, NTEN's quarterly journal for nonprofit leaders. Read the complete issue on "Collaboration" when you subscribe to the journal for free!]

By Debra Askanase, Community Organzier 2.0

This spring, the New York City Elder Abuse Center (the Center) began its journey from a traditional, “non-social” organization to one that uses and embraces social media in both its communications and internal processes. Established in 2008 as a collaborative response to the growing number of complex elder abuse cases in NYC, the NYC Elder Abuse Center helps professionals, organizations, and systems prevent elder abuse and improve their response to it.

The Center wanted to expand its reach, connections, and impact using social media and received grant funding in 2011 for social media planning and implementation through 2012. The Center staff includes just five staff members (four full-time) plus one very part-time social media manager at five hours a week. In order to accomplish the goals of social media strategy, Deputy Director Risa Breckman knew that 1.) work must be spread among staff 2.) she had to delegate others to take the lead with social media and 3.) everyone will need training in order to realize efficiencies and goals.

By Katie Delahaye Paine, CEO of KD Paine & Partners and co-author of Measuring the Networked Nonprofit: Using Data to Change the World

A simple rule of thumb is that you should spend more time learning from your data than gathering it. When you get your data, make sure you understand why things happen. This doesn’t mean that you need to prove causality, most of the time a simple correlation will do. The important thing is that you think through the results, analyze them for insights and learning, and, most of all, look for failures