Tag Archives: Nancy Schwartz

Top 10 Resources if You’re New to Nonprofits

Thoughts About the Boston Marathon Tragedy

It has been a week that we will never forget. First, the senseless tragedy at the Boston Marathon that resulted in multiple deaths and injuries to so many who were simply enjoying a holiday event. Then, the uncertainty of how long it might take to discover who was responsible – and the realization that like some other terrorist attacks, we might never know the full story. Finally, the hunt intensifying Friday in Watertown with the total shutdown of Boston but culminating with the capture of the remaining suspect.

Personally, this was very significant for me. I’ve traveled to Boston many times and am especially fond of the Back Bay area where the explosions were set off. I will be visiting there again in early June for work. One of my earliest girl friends, Pamela, briefly lived in Watertown when I first go to know her. Even though it’s been a while since I’ve been there, watching Watertown as the focus of a crime investigation hit very close to home.

It is very gratifying that the remaining suspect has been captured so quickly, thanks to the hard work of the Massachusettes police. It’s hard to imagine how difficult it must have been for Watertown residents to wait in their homes while yesterday’s events unfolded, not knowing how long they would have to live in fear.

For nonprofits, the best response I saw this week was Nancy Schwartz’s post, How to Communicate in the Midst of Tragedy. Having long been a proponent of editorial calendars and since I usually schedule many of my social media posts in advance, this was a clear reminder that sometimes we have to prepared to shift gears in our communications to our constituents.

Now, as more details come out about the Tsarnaev brothers, it is very important that we don’t use this as an opportunity to rationalize hate for any group or religion, as mentioned by the Tanenbaum Center, an organization which seeks to promote mutual respect of all religious beliefs. Teaching Tolerance is also a great resource for educating our children. We may never understand the motivation behind this crime – as if there would be any reason to want to kill an eight-year-old or to use nails in an explosive device to maximize injuries. But we must somehow learn to live with each other peacefully.

It is also very sad that legislation to tighten gun control stalled this week, months after so many children lost their lives in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. No, this wouldn’t have prevented the latest horror that unfolded in Boston using ‘home made’ explosives, but surely making it more difficult to obtain guns would help to reduce senseless violence.

To everyone in the Boston area who is recovering from injuries sustained in this week’s tragedy, and to those who are mourning losses of family members and friends, wishing you comfort and peace.

What’s New in ePhilanthropy

M&R Strategic Services hosted an informative webinar last week on Facebooks metrics and strategy. Listen to the recording or read highlights. And if you haven’t heard, watch this 2:45 video about M&R joining forces with Watershed.

How skilled is your organization in developing content for the increasing number of online (and offline) communication channels? Here’s 12 Ways to Repurpose Old Content into New. And how well do you curate content from other sources. Take Nten’s free webinar next week to learn How Content Curation Builds Staff Expertise and Reduces Information Overload.

Do you know that the most effective messages about your nonprofit’s impact don’t come directly from your organization? Read about 10 Messengers Who Are More Effective Than You.

As a follow-up to my recent post on how social media can help your nonprofit, here’s a step-by-step guide with many great links, as well as How to Manage Social Media at Your Nonprofit.

Still think that only youngsters are computer savvy? Learn how more than half of adults 65 and older are online in this report on Older Adults and Internet Use, and in this summary.

Have You Seen These Recent ‘Top 10′ Lists for Nonprofits?

Apparently, like many of us start off a new year by making resolutions, so should nonprofits. Recently I’ve noticed many top ten lists, focusing on online fundraising, communications and technology. Kivi Leroux Miller’s offered 10 Changes to Make in 2012, Network for Good published 10 Resolutions to Make (and Keep) for Online Fundraising and Marketing Success in 2012, and Convio provided 10 Ways to Kick Start 2012 Fundraising.

My favorite takeaways (mentioned in many of these lists):

Examine how your website and email communications read on mobile phones and tablets. This is how more of your constituents are accessing your content now
You don’t have to recreate the wheel. Our nonprofit colleagues are incredibly generous with their knowledge. Learn from other people (like Beth Kanter or Nancy Schwartz) and organizations (like Nten and Idealware) that offer multiple resources to help your nonprofit succeed online (and off)
Learn more about your supporters by analyzing information you probably already have: website statistics, email analytics, registration forms, polls / surveys – then use this data to better segment your communications

But as Kivi said during her webinar that described her recommendations in detail, it’s not enough to just read or listen to these suggestions. What will you do this month to apply these ideas at your organization?

Many Great Tips in 2011 Guide to Nonprofit Marketing Wisdom

Nancy Schwartz, author of Getting Attention has released the 2011 Guide to Nonprofit Marketing Wisdom, including lessons learned from 127 nonprofit marketers. Below are some of my favorite tips:

(#14) be clear about your audience before you create a strategy
(#15) let your audience interact with you the way they want and where they want to
(#32) more stories, fewer stats
(#36) always be brief, assume that ‘no one reads anything’
(#44) make sure you have elevator speech prepared and that everyone knows it
(#49) more important to show donors how gifts are being used and how clients benefit than to describe organization needs
(#54) sometimes use the phone or go face to face; sometimes the easy way to reach out is not the best way to connect
(part of #73) know what’s important to email marketing recipients and clearly connect your call to action to those priorities
(#89) prune your website to what can truly be maintained and managed
(#93) be prepared to respond to interest generated by media coverage
(#96-#97) everyone is a messenger / representative of your organization (also see my recent post)
(#109) don’t jump at every suggestion made by directors or senior management (e.g., what resources will you need to implement and how will you measure outcome?)

Thanks to Nancy for making this free resource available, and thanks also to my many nonprofit colleagues who contributed their wisdom.

What I Learned This Week

What’s especially nice about the nonprofit community is how generous everyone is in sharing their knowledge. This week I attended the Westchester Chapter meeting of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, listened to webinars on Using Online Tools for Year End Fundraising, Rethinking Your eNewsletter Strategy, a session based on the recently released Nonprofit Social Media Decision Guide and Engaging Donors through Social Media . Here’s a sampling of what I learned:

why it’s critical to have a strong case for support to present to constituents, and to make sure all staff understand it (not just development)
the importance of integrating fundraising with an organization’s overall planning process
use social media for stewardship; use email, direct mail and telemarketing to deliver a strong ask
figure out your main objectives before starting a Facebook presence – is your main goal to:
- encourage feedback / discussion
- drive traffic to website
- build email list
- attract event attendees
plan to spend at least two hours / week per channel on social media, but you will need to devote more time in the getting started phase
Facebook will soon be making available more functionality within tabs, so visitors may have less reason to go to main organization web site
when communicating with constituents:
- send fewer words more often
- talk about the future, not mainly about past events
- write more about them, less about your nonprofit

I also raised this issue during the AFP event: how can an organization find a balance between aggressively pursuing its mission with the hope of ‘putting itself out of business’ within a specified time, e.g. Michael J. Fox Foundation, versus long term nonprofits which has been seeking a cure for a disease for a very long time, but still have much ground to cover? My suggestion: keep reminding donors what their help has allowed your organization to accomplish, relating specific examples of how you’ve been able to help your target audience. And keep saying ‘thank you’ – not just when you are seeking another contribution.

Please vote on which sessions you’d like to see at Nten’s 2011 Nonprofit Technology Conference and pick your favorite slogan in the Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Awards.

For an example of how powerful video can be in communications, watch this incredibly touching one minute video by ALS Society of Canada.

Oldies but Goodies about Fundraising and Marketing

When my wife and I moved to a smaller home last year, I was faced with the daunting task of reviewing a batch of papers that I had accumulated over the years, many which were articles clipped from magazines or printouts of web postings that relate to online fundraising and marketing. To my surprise, some of these articles are still very much relevant. A sampling is below:

Multi-Channel Fundraising: Tips of the Trade (2007) – David Lawson, then with Kintera (now part of Blackbaud) and now with DonorTrends, offered seven tips in how nonprofits can establish a multi-channel fundraising initiative:

ask constituents their preferences on how they prefer to be contacted and what they want to be contacted about
use web analytics to learn what constituents are most interested in and which channels are most utilized
add communication preferences as another way to segment the database
set up a social networking page (Most of us have done this by now but still struggling to prove its value)
create cross-functional campaign integration teams so that multiple departments within an organization are accustomed to working together
enable incoming multiple-channel communications – give constituents multiple ways to respond – e.g. phone, email, web site etc.
maintain consistent messaging so that ‘overall message the image the organization would like to convey remains consistent across channels.’

Tips to Energize Your Donor Newsletter (2009) – This article from FundRaising Success Magazine details what many nonprofit enewsletters do wrong:

focusing too much on organization and not enough on what donors care about, e.g. how did my contributions make a difference?
not using the word ‘you’ to further focus on the constituent
lacking emotional triggers
not making donors feel that they are essential to how you achieve your mission
including long articles instead of short paragraphs, bulleted lists
using statistics instead of anecdotes
lacking a strong headline that will encourage a constituent to read the content

Also provided were 15 ideas on what content to include in a enewsletter (many nonprofits still wait until the last minute and struggle with what to write about).

Accentuate the Positive: How to Bridge the Divide between Fundraising and Marketing Efforts (2007) (only accessible online if you are an AFP member) – As I’ve often suggested, Network for Good‘s CEO Bill Strathmann describes the roles of marketing and fundraising are “complementary,” explaining how in many nonprofits, marketing is fundraising since it exists primarily to encourage support of the organization. Jo Sullivan, now with CDR Fundraising Group, previously managed both functions at ASPCA and described how she successfully build a strong organization brand.

(On the same topic, see Nancy Schwartz’s 2008 post on how to Make Your Communications Planning a Team Effort.)

In an effort to be more ‘green’ – and to avoid the problem of clipping articles that I won’t easily find again – I eventually switched to saving articles on my computer and then to referencing in my blog and social networking sites such as Twitter. This is much more satisfying since not only do I reinforce my personal brand in ephilanthropy, but am also able to share interesting information with my nonprofit colleagues.

Implementing the recommendations above is difficult because it may require us to restructure our organizations and change how we think about developing and implementing online campaigns. Have you been able to do this at your nonprofit?

Highlights from My Twitter Stream

Jocelyn Harmon and Geoff Livingston had an interesting discussion this week on the perennial question, Is It Possible to Raise Money with Social Media? As I’ve suggested, Geoff pointed out that while social media can be used for fundraising, its main value is in building a social community that is engaged with your cause. While Facebook Causes has worked for some nonprofits, it doesn’t allow organizations to retain contributors’ contact information for further cultivation efforts. A private, house network may also be a viable option; Geoff offered the example of TuDiabetes.

At this week’s NYC 501 Tech Club meeting, I also gave a short presentation on the recently released Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report, which also analyzes the results of a survey of almost 1,200 nonprofit professionals conducted earlier this year. Search Twitter for #501techNYC for more details on meeting. Nten is also offering a webinar series which explores the State of Social Networking in the Nonprofit Sector 2010.

Another interesting topic is the intersection of Marketing and Fundraising, explored in the Fundraising Well (and also by Steve MacLaughlin in When Marketing and Fundraising Collide). Nancy Schwartz offers four ways that these departments can work better together:

Start at the top. Your management team must support this partnership and establish a structure which facilitates collaboration.
Articulate shared priorities to serve as the core of a common agenda.
Focus on what’s working well in both areas – and do more of it
Share success stories where collaboration has resulted in positive results with constituents.

Finally, has your organization considered mission inspired gifts / gift catalogs? Also see 7 Tips for Successful Online Fundraising.

Please follow NonprofitBridge on Twitter for more.

Report from 2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference

Thanks to Holly Ross and the entire Nten staff for last week’s annual Nonprofit Technology Conference, held in New Orleans. With so many worthwhile sessions taking place during the three days, the hardest part was choosing which sections to attend. I was also fortunate to receive what was clearly the most valuable prize at the Sponsor Fair, a $1000 donation to any nonprofit of my choice, generously contributed by Jay Frank of Nice Touch Communications and Telecom for Charity.

Kudos also to Beth Kanter who organized the Day of Service to assist local nonprofits in New Orleans on the first day of the conference. Working with Nancy Schwartz, (who writes Getting Attention to help nonprofits with marketing tips), I gave a quick ephilanthropy tutorial to Casa New Orleans.

I also participated in two conference sessions:

Tug of War or Pulling Together? Building Teamwork for Better Online Campaigns, David Hollender, Jed Cohen and I reviewed strategies for how an organization can work collaboratively instead of in silos. Sharing information regularly can help, as well as a current intranet site and ‘lunch and learn’ where departments are invited to learn about each other’s projects. While it is helpful to build relationships with those in other departments before you are assigned to work on a project with them, it’s also important to make sure that your own department’s goals are met.

The Joy of CMS: Implementing Sustainable Content Management Systems (The Painless Way to Keep Your Web Site Current): I moderated a panel of three CMS experts: Andrew Cohen, Nathan Gasser and Jeff Herron. Instead of focusing on available products (of which there are many), we discussed how the idea of content management can be successfully deployed. Having a current web site is easier when the responsibilities are shared throughout the organization, and when management accepts this as part of everyone’s job. We also discussed work flow – how web pages are reviewed and released, and how to insure that web content is consistent with other communication vehicles.

I also want to commend Laura Quinn and Dahna Goldstein who moderated two sessions on data integration which I attended. Since most of us have data in many locations, it is always challenging to share information between multiple products. Memorable takeaways: when evaluating products, data integration must be on the list of requirements, and it may be best to consider vendors who have been ‘open’ from the start rather than those who have changed mostly due to market demands Let’s keep this discussion going on Nten’s Data Standards & Integration affinity group!

It was also wonderful to return to New Orleans, which clearly is still recovering from the effects of Hurricane Katrina. My wife and I were serenaded one night by a couple who lost their home and were struggling to make ends meet.

Nonprofit Bridge

Bridging Technology, Communications & Development to Implement ePhilanthropy for Nonprofit Organizations