Tuesday
Jul272010

#CitizenGulf - Unfolding a Social Media Strategy

DateTuesday, July 27, 2010 at 10:30AM | by AuthorGeoff Livingston

The CitizenGulf project was just unfolded last week. A national event on August 25 with would-be meet-ups throughout the country designed to create awareness for the Citizen Effect project, seeks to raise funds and awareness for fishing families. The effort also fits the nonprofit's citizen empowering philanthropy philosophy, which is identifying actionable problems and solutions amongst major problems, such as this one -- the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill. How does one go from an oil spill to a national meet-up event? What strategies and tools will be deployed? Here's an inside look on how we scaled from a nonexistent program to a national effort in just three months.

Strategy Begins with Research

We began our effort with a very visible citizen reporting trip featuring Citizen Effect's Dan Morrison and May Yu, Jill Foster, and myself that informed our strategy. Specifically, though it raised awareness via successful CNN iReports, photos, video, podcasts, blog posts, and social network outreach, the effort provided critical insights:

  • Defined the problem facing fishing families, an identifiable and actionable issue within the larger oil spill context. Stories were a critical component of social media to make any cause relatable.
  • Indentified a local 501c3 (Catholic Charities of New Orleans) that has relationships with the fishing families as well as a possible solution, educating their children.
  • Found local partners to work with, namely cause promoter Sloane Berrent and her existing network of national Gulf Coast supporters like Andy Sternberg via Gulf Coast Benefit

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Monday
Jul262010

2010 Overachiever’s Guide to Year-End Fundraising

DateMonday, July 26, 2010 at 09:37AM | by AuthorAlia Mckee

Like crime, procrastination doesn’t pay. Literally.

For many organizations nearly half of online fundraising revenue comes in during the month of December. But in actuality it takes months of preparation – building and stewarding an online community, inspiring donors, cultivating them, testing in advance of year-end and analyzing your metrics -- to really make the most of your year-end fundraising opportunities.

The good news is you’ve got several months – four to be exact – to get your fundraising house in order.  That’s why Eric Rardin and I co-wrote this Overachiever’s Guide and presented a Care2 webinar on this very topic last Thursday – so we could share nine steps you can implement now to help you raise more money in December.

For instance:

Your Mother gave you sage advice that holds doubly true with your donors: Always say your hellos and thank-yous.

While welcoming new donors and thanking them seems obvious, in my reviews across non-profit organizations, a majority do not welcome and thank their donors enough. And an un-thanked donor won’t be a donor for long.

  • Does your auto responder donation thank you look like a tax receipt? If so, you are missing an opportunity to re-inspire a donor who just gave to you.
  • Do you send your donors non-ask updates on your work including success stories they made possible? If not, you are missing a stewardship opportunity that is relatively cheap and easy to do online.
  • When you get a large online gift do you ever pick up the phone or send a handwritten note to thank the donor? This is a huge opportunity to bond that high-dollar donor to your cause for the long run.
  • When was the last time you made a gift to your organization? I highly recommend you find out first-hand how you are treating your donors in advance of year-end. What would you want to change about the experience? Most likely, your donors want to change that too.

For more tips for getting your thank on, download the Guide or view the webinar.

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Friday
Jul232010

Online Fundraising Contests: Effective or Digital Litter?

DateFriday, July 23, 2010 at 08:38PM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

In the good old Web 1.0 days cause marketing campaigns got a bad rap. Some criticized corporations and said their cause marketing efforts were PR stunts designed to score brownie points with the public. In the Web 2.0 world, cause marketing contests such as Pepsi Refresh and Chase Community Giving have caused a different kind of ruckus. It's called digital litter. Why? Because in cause marketing contests, charities and ordinary citizens are encouraged to reach out to their online networks and ask people to vote for their favorite charities. The charity with the most votes receives cash grants ranging from $10K to $250K+ to help fulfill their mission. Critics say that the obsession with voting is not only cluttering up their email, but their social networking space too.

"The problems with using social channels heavily for things like vote-raising events like this is that it floods one’s channel with that kind of promotion. That’s problem 1. The secondary problem is that if you’re someone with a larger following, you have to manage how many of these competitions you’re going to promote, because one begets another begets misgivings about which charities one supports and which charities one doesn’t," said Chris Brogan, who was irked enough to write about this recently on his personal blog.

Others in the debate feel that it’s an organization's actual work on the ground that should speak louder than their talent for garnering "votes". What about small nonprofits who just don't have the large email lists or staff time and resources to spend all day on social networks asking people to vote for them? How can they take advantage of opportunities like this?

"I think that nonprofits really need to think about the ROI before entering these contests. Organizations need to hit the pause button and ask if they should participate in the contest in the first place," said Beth Kanter who developed an ROI checklist as result of her research through the American Giving Challenge.

What do you think? Are online fundraising contests effective or are they turning into digital litter campaigns?

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Thursday
Jul222010

Social Media Nonprofit Benchmarks 

DateThursday, July 22, 2010 at 01:13PM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

One of the biggest questions nonprofits have been asking for the past couple of years, is what benchmarks should they be using for social media? The 2010 Nonprofit Benchmarks Report released by NTEN has some great data that nonprofits can use for guidance.

Nonprofit Social Media Benchmark Data You Need to Know

According to 1200 nonprofits surveyed:

  • Facebook is the number one used commercial social network by nonprofits. 86% said that they have a presence on Facebook, a 16% increase from 2009. However, nonprofits experienced a drop in their average community from 5,391 members in 2009 to 2,440 in 2010. 
  • 60% of Nonprofits are on Twitter as compared to 43% in 2009.
  • Twitter’s average community size (i.e. number of followers) grew the fastest and by 627%. In 2009 nonprofits had an average of 286 followers. In 2010 nonprofits average close to 1800 followers.
  • LinkedIn (largely used by education institutions and professional associations) and YouTube usage remained steady over the last year. YouTube moved up slightly from 46.5% in 2009 to 48.1% in 2010, and LinkedIn stayed steady at 32.9% in 2009 and 33.1% this year.
  • Not surprisingly MySpace suffered a 45% drop in popularity. Use dropped from 26.1% in 2009 to 14.4% in 2010.

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Monday
Jul192010

American Giving Challenge Raises $2.1 Million Dollars for Charity

DateMonday, July 19, 2010 at 10:54PM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

If your nonprofit has been contemplating entering online fundraising contests, check out the 2009 American Giving Challenge report released by the Case Foundation. Over the course of 30 days, individuals competed for donors donations and matching awards for their favorite charities. The challenge raised $2.1 million dollars for nonprofits from over 105,000 donations.

“The open design enabled any individual supporting any organization to enter the contest, and truly leveled the playing field between large established institutions and smaller grassroots organizations, said Sokunthea Sa Chhabra, Director of Interactive Communications for the Case Foundation.

Here are a few key statistics and highlights from the report.

  • More than 82,000 individual donors made 105,000 donations to nearly 8,000 causes with an average gift of $17.73
  • There was a demonstrated shift in the adoption of social media by nonprofit organizations themselves:  in the 2007-2008 Giving Challenge, a significant number of cause champions were volunteers; and in the 2009 Challenge, 40% of champions were staff of the competing nonprofit (only 25% identified as volunteers).
  • Personal connections, compelling use of videos and storytelling, and repeatedly thanking donors for gaining support for causes proved to be important elements for success in the challenge.

The report also highlighted common characteristics for winners:

Personal appeals and good storytelling to pre-existing networks of donors and friends through multiple channels were most effective methods for fundraising. Contest participants rated the following as most useful:

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Friday
Jul162010

Online Fundraising Best Practices

DateFriday, July 16, 2010 at 01:22PM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

Did You Know?

* 300 billion was raised in 2008 (Giving USA);

* $15 billion was raised online in 2008 – a 44% increase over 2007) (Blackbaud);

* $21 million has been raised by Causes since its launch three years ago;

* 30% of online giving happens in December. (2008 donorCentrics Internet Giving Collaborative Benchmarking Analysis);

* The average online gift was $144.72, according to BlackBaud though M&R’s benchmark study noted that the average one time online gift was $81.

 

How Does Your Nonprofit Measure Up?

This was the opening question Jocelyn Harmon (Director of Nonprofit Services for Care2.com) and I posed during our presentation on "The Art and Science of Fundraising Online" for the Association Foundation Group.

If your organization's average online gift is lower than you would like or your organization has not developed a well thought out year-end online fundraising campaign in the past, then you need to make changes to your online fundraising program ASAP. (You should also check out the webinar “The Procrastinators’ Guide to Year-End Fundraising” coming up on July 22nd at 2PM EST).


Seven Online Fundraising Strategies You Can Do Right Now

Create Killer Landing Pages

Tell people what you want them to do quickly. Be clear how their donation will make a difference. One tactic that has been successful for the nonprofit CARE is to provide their donors with two simple pie charts that illustrate how funds raised are allocated below the credit card donation form.

Also give people several options to contribute money – one time giving, monthly giving, etc.

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Wednesday
Jul142010

The Taggies: Nonprofit Tagline Awards

DateWednesday, July 14, 2010 at 07:59PM | by AuthorAllyson Kapin

Did you know that a strong organizational tagline does double-duty? According to Nancy Schwartz, a nonprofit consulting, "working to extend your organization’s name and mission, while delivering a focused, memorable and repeatable message to your base is one of your most effective marketing tools." However, a GettingAttention.org survey showed that 72% of nonprofit organizations don’t have a tagline or rate theirs as performing poorly. Yikes!

To turn the tide and encourage nonprofits to develop taglines with an impact, Schwartz launched the 2010 Nonprofit Tagline Awards Program. How does your nonprofit's organization tagline size up to other nonprofits?  Just enter your organizational, fundraising campaign, program and/or special event tagline!

After the voting ends by such notable judges as Katya Andresen, Chief Operating Officer, Network for Good and Kari Saratovsky, Vice President, Social Innovation at the Case Foundation, Schwartz will release an updated Tagline Report highlighting what kinds of taglines are effective and marketable and which ones simply fail.

Past winners include:

  • EarthJustice - "Because the earth needs a good lawyer"
  • The United Negro College Fund - "A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste"
  • Nothing But Net - "Send a net. Save a life."

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