When building a fundraising campaign via crowsourcing:

• Build personal relationships with people first.
• Don't treat potential donors like an ATM machine.
• Keep expections simple. (Editors Note: This was part of a live discussion between Beth Kanter and Mark Horvath of the Invisible People project).

Check out more nonprofit campaigner take-aways below.

Michael Cervino, Beaconfire: For online campaigning, a whole new world of tools and tactics is opening up for nonprofits as the commercial sector invests in social media, social networking and more sophisticated UI experiences. I saw dozens of new services and tools at SXSWi of which nonprofits could take advantage. But at the core of whether any of them will make a difference was a pervasive question by many in the sessions: What is your nonprofit’s story and why should constituents care? If we can’t answer this question in spades, no new tool in the world is going to help you build your base, improve your advocacy and raise money for your cause. Be authentic, be transparent, and be relevant before you start worrying about being “cool” or “edgy.”

Michaela Hackner, Forum One: Community is king - both online and offline. It's the way we not only identify ourselves, but most importantly a true vehicle for change. Our communities vet good ideas, apply the "trust" layer, and motivate us to take action. It is the groundswell of communities that provides the momentum and sustainability for social change. This week has reminded me that the power and benefits of getting communities together in person shouldn't be overlooked. Human contact leverages passion that sometimes gets lost online. It re-energizes and inspires. It reminds us why we do what we do.  For me, I'm excited to get more involved with my local community when I get home, and apply those local lessons on a global scale.

Clint O'Brien, Care2: It was a scary revelation that both AOL and Demand Media are using the same mechanized approach to creating content. As I understand it, first they use an algorithm to detect what people are already talking about a lot on the Interwebs, then they assign writers to blog about those matters. Talk about an echo chamber!

Organizations can sign-up to monitor between five and fifteen campaigns at a time that they are promoting on Twitter. Campaign Managers tag multiple keywords for each of the campaigns that they want to analyze. For example, if I were setting Tweetlytics up for a group like Planned Parenthood, a campaign would be Save Roe. Some keywords I would tag and track for the Save Roe campaign within Tweetlytics would be prochoice, Roe Vs Wade, Planned Parenthood, as well as opposition keywords like anti-choice, prolife, etc.

Once the campaign is up and running, Campaign Managers login and generate reports. Reports can also be delivered to your inbox daily and include:

• Total tweets and links about campaigns.
• Top Twitter users who mention your campaigns. Campaign Managers can also click on the link and see the actual tweets.
• Top hashtags

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

@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.

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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“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.

“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.

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.

The way people view the role of corporations is constantly changing. Today many of the leading Fortune 500 companies have enacted pro-social campaigns.  Everyone from Exxon to Wal-Mart have initiatives that engage non-profits and local communities.  Corporate America’s sudden enthusiasm for doing good is being backed up by statistics as well.  According to the 2008 Cone Cause Evolution Study, 79% of respondents said they would switch brands (provided price and quality were equal) to the one that is associated with a good cause. Carol Cone, one of the pioneers in the cause-marketing world attributes the change to trust issues and a changing demographic, "Consumers expect companies to have profits with purpose and there are many reasons for it.  The first is because Millennials are the most pro social demographic since WW2.  The second is because of the tremendous erosion of trust in big corporations.  So companies are now expected to not just make a profit but also become engaged in social issues."

Enter Cause Marketing

Unlike corporate philanthropy, cause marketing is really about the collaborative effort of companies and nonprofits to achieve things they could never do alone.  Take the Nothing But Nets Campaign, a collaborative effort of the UN Foundation and a number of corporate partners including the National Basketball Association and VH1 to stamp out Malaria.  Nothing But Nets successfully leveraged the UN Foundation's expertise in infectious disease with their corporate sponsors money and celebrity resources to create a vibrant campaign that distributed over 2 million bed nets in 2008.