Tag Archives: network for good

Top 10 Resources if You’re New to Nonprofits

Leave a reply

If you’re new to nonprofit communicatons, fundraising or technology , here are 10 top resources you should know about:

  1. Nonprofit Technology Network (NTen) - As a long term member, I’ve learned through webinars, local 501 tech meetings, attending the annual conference and participating in a wonderful , supportive community
  2. Idealware - Wondering what software is best for your needs?  Laura Quinn’s Idealware offers impartial reports and low priced webinars to help you decide.
  3. Beth’s Blog –  Beth Kanter taught us how important social media was before it became mainstream.  Her insights are always insightful.
  4. Nonprofit Tech 2.0: A Social Media Guide for Nonprofits - Heather Mansfield offers great information in her blog, and in free/low cost webinars.
  5. Foundation Center – Databases, training, libraries focused on philanthropy.  Worth a visit if you’re in NYC (4 other offices across US)
  6. Getting Attention - Marketing guru Nancy Schwartz can help your organization develop a powerful message to your constituents
  7. John Haydon - Especially focused on Facebook, John will help optimize your social media strategy.
  8. Nonprofit Marketing Guide - Kivi Leroux Miller is a savior when you’re the only marketing / communications person at your organization;  great blog and resources.
  9. Tech Soup – Discounted software and hardware (and much more)
  10. Network for Good - Reasonably priced options for email marketing and online fundraising, and regularly scheduled training

For those nonprofit veterans, what additional resources would you add?

What’s New in ePhilanthropy

Should we focus on one website that can be used effectively on a desktop, tablet or phone?  Usability expert Jakob Nielsen suggests developing a separate mobile website. But Smashing Magazine disagrees, saying We Shouldn’t Make Separate Mobile Websites.  My take: if you have the in-house expertise or can afford to hire outside experts,  take a responsive design approach so that your display adjusts to browser screen size.  (If you’re in NYC, learn how at this free event at Noble Desktop on Sep. 19.)

At least for now, mobile apps can be more user friendly than a mobile website.  If you decide to develop a mobile app, here’s some tips to get started.  My take – unless you have a compelling reason for an app, focus on the mobile website first.

On your website and on social media, it’s all about engagement.  Here’s 37 Tips to Engage Your Website Visitors, 27 Ways to Increase Engagement on Your Facebook Page and Better Facebook Engagement in 5 Easy Lessons.  Reminder – if your Facebook fans don’t interact with your posts (likes, comments, shares), they eventually won’t see your updates.  (This shouldn’t be too surprising – less than 20% of your email subscribers probably open your enewsletters – but at least they receive it in their inbox.)

Want to make sure your offline and online communications are in synch.  Start by creating an editorial calendar.  (It doesn’t have to be fancy – MS Excel will work fine.)  Then reuse content in both your enewsletters and social media posts.

It’s usually much easier to keep your current donors than to acquire new contributors. Here’s why donors become ex-donors and some ways to keep them connected with your cause and your organization.

Things You May Not Know About Facebook

If you take the time to develop a large following on your nonprofit Facebook page, then all of these constituents will view your updates in their news feed, right?  Not necessarily, said John Haydon this week in his webinar 27 Ways to Increase Engagement On Your Facebook Page, offered through Network for Good.  Read below for highlights, then register to access the recording:

  1. 84% of your Facebook fans don’t get your updates in their newsfeed.  Facebook uses Edgerank to determine whether or not your content will appear.  (Learn more about how Edgerank works here and here.)
  2. Although you might have a beautiful Facebook Timeline page with a really nice cover photo, less than 5% of your fans will ever see it (they’ll only see your posts in their newsfeed)
  3. Morning and evening posts are likely to get more attention than in the afternoon because this is when your fans are likely to be online
  4. Check your Facebook Insights statistics to learn what your optimal posting frequency is, i.e. how often each day you should post).
  5. Unlike Twitter, you should not shorten links on Facebook.  By using the full URL, visitors will know to expect and are more likely to click through  (Services such as Timely and Buffer are useful for spacing out posts throughout day, but they will automatically shorten URLs.).
  6. Post pictures liberally – will get much more response than plain text links
  7. Ask questions to encourage interaction, but make it easy to respond (use yes/no or true/false questions, then use ‘like’ for one option and ‘comment’ for the other)

Having a presence on Facebook is a must these days (many constituents will look there before they visit your website), but following John’s great tips will make it more likely that you’ll get the results you seek – to encourage your audience to be more involved with your organization.

What’s New in ePhilanthropy

This week’s torrent of news centered around Susan B. Komen’s decision to pull funding from Planned Parenthood, the torrent of outrage which eventually caused them to reverse their decision.  What’s even more amazing is that Planned Parenthood supporters stepped in to make up the loss by special contributions, similar to in the past when funding was taken away.  Congratulations to Planned Parenthood for quickly activating their dedicated constituents;  shame to Komen for ruining its branding with such a poorly thought out decision.

So Facebook is going public.  How will this affect its relationship with its many devotees, which is expected to increase to 1 BILLION later this year?  It’s a bit sad that Convio, not long after going public, agreed to be acquired by its long term competitor, Blackbaud, apparently to take advantage of a financial windfall.  (Also see my recent blog post.)  It will be interesting to watch the path Facebook follows once its loyalties move mostly to its shareholders.

Pinterest seems to be very popular lately.  Have you used it yet?  With all the social media tools available, Small Act (via my friend Shana Masterson) suggests you choose carefully how many you can manage.  (I’m posting regularly on Twitter and Facebook, but less so on LinkedIn and Google Plus so far, trying to find content which is appropriate to each platform.)

After they donate or take the actions you request, do you make sure to thank your donors? Here are some tips from Guidestar and a quiz from Network for Good.

Are you getting good response from your email marketing efforts?  Use these 7 tips for appeals and also 5 Best Practices for Increasing Email Subscribers Engagement.  (And go here if you need help in getting them to sign up to receive your emails.)

Thinking about getting a tablet, such as the iPad or Kindle Fire?  Here’s a good article to read first.

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 Reports Out This Week

The Online Giving Study from Network for Good and True Sense Marketing offers a comprehensive look of ephilanthropy, covering a 7 year time span and a wide range of nonprofits.  Many others have already discussed its results – see Frogloop, The Agitator and Wild Apricot.  What I particularly liked:

  • online fundraising is about relationship building, just as has it was for traditional development.  This is a great reminder for nonprofits that focus only on the technology, or who treat online as a very ‘different’ channel than offline.
  • most online givers still go through the nonprofit’s own website to donate, less frequently to giving portals and social giving sites.  More importantly, those who give through the charity’s site tend to donate more over the long term than other givers.
  • recurring giving should always be offered as an option.  Perhaps eventually it will be used as often in the US as it is elsewhere in the world.
  • those who give in December have a higher long term value than donors in other months.  Do you need any more of a reason to make sure your year-end appeals go out this month?
  • ‘disaster’ givers have lower long term value and lower retention.  But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use stewardship strategies to build a relationship with these contributors.

Idealware’s updated Open Source Content Management Systems Report takes another look at Drupal, Joomla, WordPress and Plone.  Drupal still offers the most flexibility and has the support of a large international community.  But all of these tools are potent;  Wordpress is especially noteworthy for its ease of use and has developed into much more than a blogging tool.

Pew Internet’s first survey to focus on Twitter concludes that 8% of Online Americans Use Twitter which may seem like a low number, but nevertheless offers some interesting insights into the groups that are most active.  For example, while it may be no surprise that young people (18-29) are heavy users, the report also concludes that African Americans and Latinos are more than twice as likely to use Twitter as white users.  And even if you know if your constituents are on Twitter, their usage may differ greatly;  the report contrasts those who check multiple times / day for updates (25%) with those who never check for new content (20%).  My take: while it may have started out as a social service, that’s not the case now and your nonprofit should be using Twitter to connect with your audience.

Finally, in response to Apple’s reluctance to facilitate nonprofit fundraising on the iPhone, Beth Kanter has pledged to switch to an Android phone.  (I’m getting one too, but decided to do so before the recent controversy featured in the NY Times erupted.)  I believe the Androids will eventually overtake the iPhones, even with Verizon getting the iPhone (finally) soon.

What’s New in ePhilanthropy

Attended an interesting session on email marketing and social media at the All About Email Virtual Conference and Expo yesterday, reviewing how these channels can be used to complement each other.  An important point – since you don’t ‘own’ information on Facebook and Twitter, it’s still important to build your own email list.  (Sessions were recorded and will be available for listening starting Mon, Nov. 15.)

While we’ve seen reports on social media and email marketing, there’s been little to guide nonprofits on website statistics until the new 2010 Website Benchmarks Report available from Groundwire.  Although the report focuses on small environmental organizations, its findings are useful for all nonprofits.

When deciding how to do fundraising, do you rely on data or on your own instinct.  Jeff Brooks in Future Fundraising Now suggests that you use facts and past experience as your guide.   And if you think that a multichannel approach to fundraising / marketing is something new, take a look at Hank Rosso’s classic Achieving Excellence in Fundraising, last revised in 2003 (see chapter on using the Internet as a fundraising vehicle).

If you still need help with your year end fundraising drive yet, get some help from Network from Good’s upcoming webinar as well as this tool from Blue State Digital which analyzes your Google Analytics data.  (Tip – don’t wait until the last week of 2010 to frantically prepare an appeal.)

Like to be on the cutting edge?  Try RockMelt, a soon to be released browser which integrates social media.

If you’re in NYC next week, attend the Foundation Center’s Open House on Tue, Nov. 16 and Nten‘s 501 Tech NYC meeting Wed evening, Nov. 17, which will feature Allyson Kapin, from Rad Campaign, Women Who Tech and lead blogger at Frogloop offering tips on nonprofit technology and social media.

What’s New in ePhilanthropy

Social media expert Beth Kanter updated her list of listening, monitoring, engaging and management tools.  It’s not easy to measure the results of social networking, but it’s important to pick at least some of these programs, most which are free, to evaluate your efforts.   Here’s some questions to help evaluate your social media initiatives.   (Thanks also to Harish Rao for highlighting this topic for GrassrootsCamp at a live event this week in NYC.)

Network for Good‘s Katya Andresen explains why you can’t just focus on older donors, even though they have traditionally been the most reliable givers.   Older constituents are also getting more active in social media , per reviews in The Agitator.net and the Chronicle of Philanthropy of a recent Pew Internet report.

It’s challenging to change the name of a major event, but the March of Dimes used a variety of strategies to rebrand its major fundraising event (not all which worked well).

Courtesy of Big Duck’s blog, use these tips to revitalize your email subject lines.  (Sorry, email is still a valuable way to reach constituents, despite the rising role of social media.)

Finally, TechSoup asks what does your organization look like from the outside, reminding us of the importance of clear, consistent messaging across our online (and offline) communications.

Have a safe and restful Labor Day weekend.

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:

  1. ask constituents their preferences on how they prefer to be contacted and what they want to be contacted about
  2. use web analytics to learn what constituents are most interested in and which channels are most utilized
  3. add communication preferences as another way to segment the database
  4. set up a social networking page (Most of us have done this by now but still struggling to prove its value)
  5. create cross-functional campaign integration teams so that multiple departments within an organization are accustomed to working together
  6. enable incoming multiple-channel communications – give constituents multiple ways to respond – e.g. phone, email, web site etc.
  7. 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:

  1. focusing too much on organization and not enough on what donors care about, e.g. how did my contributions make a difference?
  2. not using the word ‘you’ to further focus on the constituent
  3. lacking emotional triggers
  4. not making donors feel that they are essential to how you achieve your mission
  5. including long articles instead of short paragraphs, bulleted lists
  6. using statistics instead of anecdotes
  7. 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?

What’s New in ePhilanthropy

When you present, do you get frustrated with attendees who seem to be paying more attention to their phones / computers than to your presentation?  In her presentation this week on the Trainer’s Social Media Tool Box, Beth Kanter explained how to use social media to enhance your sessions by encouraging sharing of information.   A new book, the Back Channel, details this phenomenon in more detail.  (If you’re still waiting until the end of your talk to take questions, you definitely need to see Beth’s notes.)

Jeff Brooks also spoke on a Network for Good call on what not to do in online fundraising – slides are available here.  (Hint – if your figures are not growing, you’re missing something.)

Do you maintain a database for advocacy that’s separate from your main donor database?  Care2′s webinar on Connecting Advocacy to Fundraising showed how activists can also be top fundraisers, if you take the time to cultivate them.   Activists also consistently open emails more frequently than other supporters.

If you need help in selecting tools for your organization (who doesn’t?), take a look at Idealware’s just released Field Guide to Software for Nonprofits.  Laura Quinn’s organization has always provided great information through her web site, blog and enewsletter.  I helped with some edits for this book – it is definitely worth getting.

Now that there’s so many ways to communicate with constituents, are you taking the time to make sure your messaging is consistent and on brand across channels?  See notes from Kivi Leroux Miller’s talk this week on Integrating Your Website, Email Newsletter and Social Media Sites.  Also see Blackbaud’s tips on Multi-Channel Engagement.

Like most nonprofits, Idealist has having some challenging times and has asked for our help.  Ami Dar’s work has long benefited the nonprofit community.  Please help.

Finally, are you helping your constituents to run their own fundraising events, or do you only help with events run by your organization?  If so, you’re missing a huge opportunity. Read Independent Fundraising Events Bring Big Returns, which links to a recent white paper by Blackbaud and Event 360; you can also register for a webinar on Feb. 3 to learn more.