Nonprofit Bridge

During this week’s Nonprofit Technology Conference, two new reports have been released:

1. Nonprofit Social Network Survey Report by Nten, Common Knowledge and The Port shows that social networking has become an integral part of nonprofits’ online strategy.  A recent Washington Post article suggested that Facebook’s popular Causes application has not been successful in fundraising in comparison with email appeals and other more traditional ways to generate donations.   But Beth Kanter points out that the value of tools like Facebook can’t be measured only in terms of money raised.  I agree – when my marketing director recently asked me for fundraising results from our Facebook page, I pointed out that generating buzz and engaging constituents in our organization is also valuable.  Beth suggests we seek a metric to measure this.
2. Idealware and Nten’s Consumer’s Guide to Low Cost Donor Management Systems suggests looking at what features you need in managing your donor relationships before reviewing specific products.  Sadly, how often do our organizations go through this type of detailed evaluation before selecting a product?  Sometimes the problem isn’t the product, it’s the processes within the nonprofit and the training (or lack of training) that is provided to staff.  Make sure your database has a way to integrate with your existing systems – see my recent post on Reporting Across Multiple Systems.

Nten has also provided a way for those of who couldn’t attend NTC this year to participate online.  Make sure you take a look at Holly’s version of Beyonce’s Single Ladies.

Many of us in the nonprofit sector aren’t as effective as we could be in interacting with our constituents because departments of our organizations aren’t working together.  Often each department will have its own agenda, and offline and online strategies are handled by different areas.

In No Constituent is an Island, Steve MacLaughlin suggests that we stop thinking about offline and online and simply treat them as different channels.  Steve offers some interesting analogies, such as how we would react if we deposited a check at our bank but its online system had no record of it, or if you bought tickets online but when you arrived at the event, the box office could not access your purchase information.

Social media guru Beth Kanter offers a similar perspective in Silos Culture Inside the Walls of Nonprofits Prevent Effective Social Media Use.  She describes the experience of a nonprofit staff member who tried to promote a social media policy within their organization, but encountered departmental turf battles.  The volunteers who had asked to start using Facebook to promote the nonprofit eventually started on their own;  the organization only became involved later.   Social media brings up even more challenges since some of us still think it deserves a place with other tools we use to interact with our supporters.

With the increasing popularity of social media, some are asking if email is on the way out, e.g. Will eMail Fundraising Die.  But just as direct mail is still effective, so is email.   These tools work best when part of an integrated strategy.  To accomplish this, our nonprofits have to change how we’ve traditionally worked.  One way to do this is to have frequent cross-deparatment projects and meetings – not long, drawn out lectures but quick updates so each area is aware of what other parts of the organization are working on.   This is why project management is so important at nonprofits to help staff across departments and locations to learn to work collaboratively.

Constituents don’t view us as different departments but as one organization.  It’s time we started to treat ourselves the same way.

Currently I spend a few days each week generating reports for transmission of information between my organization’s online and offline systems.  Matt McCabe of Orange Leap hosted a NTen webinar this week, Meaningful Reporting: A Holistic Approach to Reporting Across Multiple Systems which highlighted this issue.  While there are no easy solutions, there are some options to consider:

1. Select vendors and products which connect well with other systems.  Salesforce is an example of a company which has many ways to link its CRM to other software.
2. Before implementing a new product, figure out how you will synchronize its data with your existing systems.  If you need to spend considerable time running reports and exporting / importing data, you’ll have little time to focus on developing the synchronization.
3. Consider how much information you really need to have in multiple systems.  Some products will allow you to transfer basic contact information, but may not  be able to handle synchronization of event data or custom fields.
4. Unless you have a lot of money to spend, it won’t be possible to have a ‘real time’ synch;  decide how often it is practical to have your systems connect with each other.
5. Make the synchronization run automated, preferably during off hours.  The more manual work you need to do, the more chance there is for error.  (But make sure you look at the error log to determine what didn’t work.)
6. Confirm that you’re including all activity.  Donations and event registrations may not be available in the same report;  you may need to find a ‘transaction report’ that includes all activity (then confirm this by sampling different types of transactions)
7. Stick to a schedule – and let your staff know when synchronization is taking place.  (My most common question from staff is why a particular transaction doesn’t appear in another system, and when they can expect it to show.)
8. If you encourage constituents to fundraise for your organization using a tool like Convio’sTeamRaiser or Blackbaud / Kintera’s Thon, you’ll need to find a way for offline donations to appear quickly on constituents’ personal web sites when developing your synchronization schedule.

In his presentation, Matt described the steps of data extraction, consolidation, reconciliation between systems and presentation, suggesting that you compute the staff hours spent in completing these tasks – and making management aware of the actual price in making integrated information available.  His overall recommendations included:

• develop standards, e.g. how does your organization define ‘online giving’?  Become familar with APIs (application program interface) and Active Messaging Protocols (XMLs)
• seek platform independent tools, e.g. using OLAP data storage and a data warehouse
• empower end users to generate their own reports

The benefit: more time to devote to mission, faster more informed decisions and higher morale, and an increase in staff morale, as they’re freed from tedious reporting tasks.

How are you dealing with this issue?

Do You Really Need an Online Community – Also, do you setup your own community using a tool like Ning, or do you establish a presence on existing communities such as Facebook?  It’s important to consider your organization’s objectives, not just to keep up with other nonprofits are doing.

10 Best Web Content Practices – Are you taking the time to review content before it goes live, or are you just pushing updates through quickly so your site is ‘fresh’?

Tips for Entering Your Nonprofit Into the Social Media Environment – There’s much talk about social media, but many of us are still trying to figure out the best way to integrate these tools into our other online strategies.  For more ideas on this topic, listen to Common Knowledge webinars.

A Few Good Tools for Online Distributed Fundraising – Idealware’s articles are always helpful, and this look at how to host third party fundraising is no exception.  Make sure your organization is making it simple for your supporters to raise funds through their own activities (not only the events your nonprofit plans).

Five Things We’re Forgetting When We Take Our Fundraising Online – Network for Good explains how offline fundraising concepts still apply when you move onlne.

How Much eMail is Too Much – Are you overdoing a good thing?  Here’s a look at one organization that took a hard look at its email marketing frequency.

Congratulations to Holly Ross at Nten for selling out the Nonprofit Technology Conference for the first time ever – and kudos again for establishing a scholarship fund to help many of us to attend.  Happy Passover and Easter to everyone.