A pioneer in social networking, the American Cancer Society realizes that Web 2.0 tools are just high-tech ways to continue what it's been doing for a hundred years — building and interacting with a community of constituents united against cancer.

By Abny Santicola

Music says that around 2002 the organization began to shift its language and thinking from an internal perspective to an external one focused more on constituent relationship management.

“Constituent relationship management really started to become a philosophy that we promoted, that we talked about,” Music says. “We really did a lot of change management around letting customers be king in the American Cancer Society, which allowed us to put the framework in that really you should be constituent-centric in all of the decisions that you make, whether it’s delivering a mission program or having a fundraiser. You should be listening to the people who are going to participate in that and building those offerings around what they want, not necessarily what the internal leadership of the organization might think is the best thing to do.”