Wednesday
10Mar2010

SXSW Nonprofit Picks

DateWednesday, March 10, 2010 at 10:47AM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

SXSW is just around the corner. For five days nonprofit campaigners, techies, and social media enthusiasts will gather for one of the largest and most anticipated conferences of the year. But with over 3K+ attendees and hundreds of panels, core conversations, workshops and parties, it can be overwhelming to get the most out of SXSW. No worries though. Frogloop has put together a short list of the best nonprofit and political campaign related panels as well as parties and gatherings for the nonprofit community. Read on!

Panels

Debunking the Myth of Social Media Fundraising
March 13 at 12:30 PM

This panel will discuss several case studies showing successful fundraising strategies that incorporate Social Media sites like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The panel will review results from a recently completed research project investigating social media fundraising strategies specifically supporting events.

PRESENTERS
Brooke McMillan, Stacey Monk, Frank Barry, Donna Wilkins and Jodie Kolkowski

2009 Iran Election: Women's Revolution? Twitter Revolution?
March 14 at 11:00 AM

By campaigning and protesting Iranian women surprised onlookers through their sociopolitical participation during the 2009 Iranian election. What led to the sudden appearance of an invisible part of Iranian society, and what role did emerging media play? This panel will discuss online political activity during and prior to the election.

PRESENTERS
Roja Bandari, Mona Kasra, Shireen Mitchell and Dr. David Parry

Not Just for Obama: New Media Gets Local
March 14 at 12:30 PM

Local political campaigns have adopted many of the tools of national campaigns but with varied success. This panel will examine the tools now being used in local races and by local activists (Facebook, Wordpress, Drupal, Twitter, SMS, etc) and give specific examples of success and failures.

PRESENTERS
Julie Blitzer and David Parmet

Crowd Sourcing Innovative Social Change
March 14 at 3:30 PM

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Monday
08Mar2010

Top Nonprofit Leaders to Follow on Twitter

DateMonday, March 8, 2010 at 04:46PM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

In the past year, registered Twitter accounts have grown more than 1,500%, according to Biz Stone, Co-Founder of Twitter. With such an explosion of new voices, that’s a lot of tweets and noise for nonprofit campaigners to filter through.  So if you can only carve out 20 minutes a day to follow nonprofit leaders and thinkers discussing nonprofit issues on Twitter, who would they be? Tough question, right? There are so many smart folks. Here’s my top 10. Feel free to add your top picks too in the comments section.  Note: I have kept the list to only include one person per organization. And don’t forget to follow @Care2frogloop – Frogloop’s very own Twitter feed.

@jocelynharmon – Jocelyn, who has been working in the nonprofit sector for over a decade tweets about online fundraising and how to connect with donors, email marketing, and online advocacy. Jocelyn is also the Director of Nonprofit Services for Care2.com, the company who runs the Care2Frogloop blog.

@kanter – The go-to expert on social media for nonprofits.

 

@mobileactive – One of the best sources for information on integrating mobile into campaigns.



@NancySchwartz – As a nonprofit marketer, Nancy tweets about online and offline communications including email copywriting, fundraising strategy, and nonprofit resources she discovers.

 

@nptechblogs – Tweets about the latest articles from the top nonprofit blogs.

 

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Wednesday
03Mar2010

Homer Simpson for Nonprofits: The Truth about How People Really Think and What It Means for Promoting Your Cause  

DateWednesday, March 3, 2010 at 04:18PM | by AuthorAlia Mckee

What does Homer Simpson have to do with your cause? More than you probably think.  

People including your activists, donors and prospects share a lot in common with Homer Simpson. And I don’t just mean they love bacon.  

We might not want to admit it, but people make irrational, Homer-like decisions every day. We cave to social norms. We opt for small, immediate satisfaction, rather than big long-term gain. We buckle to authority.  

The list of illogic is long. And it adds up to making decisions that are often contrary to our own best interests. 

But while we may be irrational, we are not unpredictable.  

Enter in behavioral economics.  

A reaction to “rationality”— the concept that people use logic and reason to make the best choices for themselves — behavioral economics identifies social, cognitive, and emotional factors that influence decisions. 

The big takeaway? People make decisions like Homer Simpson, not Spock.  

What’s more, in the nonprofit space these irrational decisions have high stakes. We’re not asking people to buy a Coke. We’re asking them to change the world. Their decisions matter — a lot.   

So what’s a nonprofit marketer and fundraiser to do?  

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Tuesday
02Mar2010

Online Fundraising Strategies Conference 

DateTuesday, March 2, 2010 at 10:30AM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

Mark your calendar for March 30, 2010 where some of the top minds in online fundraising and social media will gather in DC at the Newseum for the Online Fundraising Strategies Conference hosted by Artez Interactive. Join Care2's Jocelyn Harmon and Eric Rardin who will be leading the soup to nuts panel, Nonprofits and New Blood: An Overview of Online Acquisition Tactics and Strategies.

The workshop will discuss why recruiting new donors, advocates, and members are critical to nonprofit's growth. There are numerous tactics for online acquisition including Search Engine Marketing, Co-Registration, Email List Rental and Lead Generation. Nonprofits will also learn ways to evaluate the performance of online acquisition programs so that they can improve their return on investment. Finally, nonprofits will hear about best practices in converting new subscribers into donors through direct appeals, multichannel conversions, and peer-to-peer fundraising.
  
Don't miss this opportunity to learn from the top thinkers in the industry and network with your peers at the Online Fundraising Strategies Conference.
  
Click here to see the full agenda and register.



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Sunday
28Feb2010

Is Your Nonprofit Cultivating Women Donors?

DateSunday, February 28, 2010 at 08:21PM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

Is your nonprofit reaching women and harnessing their power for social change? If your nonprofit is not actively marketing to women and recruiting them, your organization is missing out on major fundraising opportunities. During last week’s webinar The She Spot – Best Practices in Marketing to Women, Lisa Witter co-author of the book The She Spot and Morra Aarons-Mele of Women Online discussed why women are the market for changing the world and how to reach them.

“Women have numerical advantages,” said Witter and Mele. The average profile of a volunteer in the US is a working mother. Surprised? Check out these stats.

  • Women give more to nonprofits then men.
  • In the last four presidential elections, women voted at higher percentages then men.
  • Women are connectors. Women are twice as likely to pass on information about your cause. So if your organization is not connecting with women in your campaigns, your nonprofit is missing out on major word of mouth marketing.
  • Women make 83% of consumer purchasing decisions.
  • Latina women are 3.5x more likely to respond to direct mail.
  • 70% of women say that it’s important for companies to engage in corporate social responsibility and be active in their local community.

Connecting with women in online social networks is also important, said Mele. Social media allows nonprofits to get to know their audiences because they can engage back and fourth with them real time.

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Thursday
25Feb2010

Is Your Nonprofit Reaching Diverse Activists and Donors

DateThursday, February 25, 2010 at 10:53AM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

The demographics of the US are changing. An estimated 40% of the US is comprised of people of color, according to 2008 US Census data. Yet many nonprofits online lists aren’t diverse. Why aren’t nonprofits cultivating diverse activists and donors (a topic Jocelyn Harmon of Care2, Shireen Mitchell of Digital Sistas, and Ivan Booth of Rootwork and I will be discussing on our panel at NTC on April 10th)?  People of color care about the environment and climate change, women’s rights and equal pay, healthcare reform, labor reform, human rights, etc. Yet outreach and cultivation to diverse communities are typically done around election time, instead of as part of our regular campaign outreach work. This is a big mistake.

“Many people of color's lives are impacted by social justice issues everyday, some significantly more than others. Many are committed and have died for the issues they believe in. They are committed activists and nonprofits should be cultivating them,” said Shireen Mitchell, founder of Digital Sistas, a nonprofit that focuses on promoting women's equality in technology and a public speaker on this issue.

Furthermore, by not having diverse activists and donors, nonprofits are missing out on interesting and new ways to discuss, approach or address social justice issues with diverse audiences which also brings diverse perspectives, said Mitchell.

During the 2008 Presidential election, voter turnout increased by about “2 million more black voters, 2 million more Hispanic voters and about 600,000 more Asian voters, while the number of non-Hispanic white voters remained statistically unchanged,” according to the US Census Bureau.

Are nonprofits harnessing the social power of diverse communities who care about issues that nonprofits advocate?

“At the most basic level, all nonprofits are trying to change something in the world. It goes without saying that how we go about organizing, communicating and fundraising and whom we engage in our work can have a dramatic impact on our outcomes,” said Harmon in a recent blog post on Diversity, Community, Technology and You.

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Wednesday
24Feb2010

Tips for Managing and Engaging Online Communities

DateWednesday, February 24, 2010 at 09:44AM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

Before Web 2.0 took over the world, people were part of smaller online participatory communities called listservs. Remember them? Though not as sexy as Twitter, people are still active on listservs and they continue to be valuable tools for nonprofits and community groups to connect with people who are passionate about discussing issues, sharing resources, and engaging in thoughtful and sometimes heated debates. Yet even after all these years, many organizations still haven’t mastered how to use listservs in building successful and engaging online communities.

The biggest barriers groups face is how to structure listservs.

  • Should they be moderated?
  • How should people frame their topic for discussion when they post to the listserv? By subject line categories?
  • How do you handle posts that are just “loosely” related to the community? Is that considered off topic? Is that a bad thing? Should the posts be rejected?
  • How do you handle heated debates and inappropriate comments?

Do you see a pattern emerging from the questions above? Organizations are typically uncomfortable giving up control. But if organizations are going to truly engage people in meaningful discussions online, they need get comfortable letting people talk, even if that means that they don’t share the same perspectives as some members of the community.

“I think there's a delicate balance to be had. Moderate too little, and everyone except the loudmouths and bullies get shut out. (I say that as a loudmouth myself, no offense intended.),” said Jaclyn Friedman who runs the very active Women, Action & The Media (WAM!) Media listserv.

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