Category Archives: communications

How the NY Public Library Successfully Rolled Out Website Content Management

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At yesterday’s quarterly meeting of the Not-for-Profit Webmaster Round Table, we shared a particularly interesting discussion on website content management.  As group founder and leader David Milner pointed out, nonprofits spend considerable time and money to update a website, but not nearly as much effort to keep site content fresh and relevant.

Although there are many great open source content management systems available, I’ve noticed that it’s still a challenge for many nonprofits to decentralize the process of updating website content at our organizations.  But at least one organization at our meeting has figured out how to do it right.  Michelle Misner, Digital Project Manager at the NY Public Library, kindly shared her experience with us yesterday in rolling out Drupal which “revolutionalized” how their website is maintained.  How did they do it?

  1. Setup extensive training both during rollout and on an ongoing basis to familiarize staff with the new software
  2. Recruited senior management to spearhead the process, including the modification of staff roles to include responsibility for website content updates
  3. Using permissions, user rights and specific Drupal content types, entrusted staff with responsibility for specific areas of the website and chose not to use an intricate approval process.  Instead, there is a staff person who monitors site updates.
  4. Encouraged in-house developer to learn Drupal to maintain the system instead of having to continue to rely on the outside firm which assisted with the implementation.

We also took a look at how to optimize web content for specific contents, such as the Boston Globe‘s impressive use of responsive design,  shared tips for getting the most from Google AdWords and debated the latest Facebook news feed updates.

Thanks to David for having kept our group active for several years and to Michelle for sharing her story about how we can better manage content for our websites.  Quoting David, paying attention to your website could make the difference between your organization receiving an online donation, attracting a volunteer – or not.

7 Tips to Implement a Successful Fall ePhilanthropy Campaign

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Sadly, Labor Day is followed by fall with shorter days and cooler weather.  But it also provides an opportunity to reconnect with your constituents, climaxed by the important year-end fundraising campaign.  Here are some ways to hit the ground running when you return to the office tomorrow:

  1. Prepare an integrated communications / fundraising calendar describing how you will engage with your supporters across channels.  Balance appeals with messages showing how your organization has helped your target audience and be specific about you’ve utilized past donations.
  2. Start planning content for email campaigns well in advance, using these 7 tips for better fundraising emails and applying these best practices for enewsletters - they apply just as much for nonprofits as for small businesses (More ideas here)
  3. Take the time to analyze data on email subscribers, website traffic, Facebook ‘likers,’ Twitter followers etc. so you better understand what platforms your constituents are engaging with you
  4. Is your website consistently providing fresh content that is in synch with your other communication media?  If not, have you provided ongoing training to staff on how to utilize your content management software?  (What?  You don’t have a CMS.  Read Idealware’s Five Tips for A Successful Open Source CMS Project on a Budget)
  5. Find a few simple ways to start thinking multi-channel, even if it means changing the way your nonprofit usually works.  Get ideas from Frogloop’s  Multichannel Magic, then read about others’ successes in this month’s upcoming nonprofit blog carnival hosted by Big Duck featuring this topic
  6. Get out of your office.  If you’re in NYC, for example, you can learn how to innovate and thrive in the digital age at this month’s 501 Tech NYC event and discuss what makes successful websites at the Not-for-Profit Webmaster Round Table.  (You can also learn from your desk by taking a webinar during you lunch hour.)
  7. Optimize your online giving forms, paying particular attention to whether they work as well on mobile and tablet platforms, where more of your constituents are seeing them.
Congratulations once again to Charity:Water, which has kicked off its September campaign as another example of how to do ephilanthropy right with stirring video and constantly providing feedback on how it uses donations towards its mission of providing clean water worldwide .

Thoughts After a Hurricane

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It’s been an eventful week in New York.  First, we were shaken by a rare East Coast earthquake.  Then, we were faced with a Hurricane Irene which forced many of us to relocate to higher ground.  While not as severe as anticipated, this weekend’s storm has caused massive damage and electrical outages for many.  I was extremely lucky;  my thoughts are with those who are facing major clean-up efforts.

Is your nonprofit prepared for a disaster?  Care2 offers a webinar this week on Surviving and Thriving When a Crisis Hits.    And while this week’s events were a major inconvenience, find a way to Put Your Cause in the Eye of the Storm to tell stories about how your organization helps its target audience.  Here are some Tools to Help Any Nonprofit Tell Stories Online from Amy Sample Ward.

For yet another reason to use social media, read why Nonprofits Are Expected to Use Social Media During Disasters.  For many great ideas on how to implement a social media strategy at your organization, learn from Jereme Bivins in his Social Media Case Study on how the Foundation Center uses Thrive and other tools.  Per Pew Internet, 65% of Online Adults Now Use Social Networking Sites.

Most of us make presentations, but it’s always challenging to keep listeners engaged, especially when you’re on a webinar.  I participated in last week’s Nonprofits Live: Great Presentations, offered by Tech Soup.  You can watch and listen to the event here or search the #nplive hashtag on Twitter  which include many of my comments.

Help Nten to make next spring’s Nonprofit Technology Conference the best yet by tweeting your ideas to #12NTC.  Work for a really great organization?  Nominate your organization as one of the 50 Best Nonprofits to Work For In 2012.

Report from Event Fundraising Roundtable

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This week I joined many nonprofit colleagues at the Event Fundraising Table sponsored by the Run Walk Ride Fundraising Council, Blackbaud, Charity Dynamics and Event 360, focusing on ideas to stimulate peer to peer fundraising.  Below is a summary of my takeaways:

How can I get more event participants to fundraise?

  • encourage participants to form and join teams, then ask their employers to sponsor corporate teams
  • offer incentives for specified fundraising levels
  • provide step by step instructions and coaching
  • ask on the registration form – are you planning to fundraise?  Then prepare different messaging based on their response
  • encourage participant donations – makes it more likely they will ask others to contribute

How to Use Social Media for Event Fundraising

  • Sponsor live chats with top fundraisers (chats don’t only have to be about fundraising, but can help to build affiliation with nonprofit)
  • Create a mobile phone application, then push it out to social media (has worked well for March of Dimes and will be released soon by National MS Society)
  • Target Facebook messages based on location
  • Provide Facebook exclusive content
  • Give ‘white glove service’ to top fundraisers (at National MS Society – 50% of $ is raised by top 2% of fundraisers!)
  • In multi-site organization, national office can offer weekly highlights to provide content to local chapter / affiliate offices

How Can I Enhance My Marketing and Communication Efforts?

  • Event360 strongly suggested segmenting messages (my concern – do many of our orgs have staffing to provide strong content for different audiences)
  • Focus on customer service – offer a special hotline for top fundraisers
  • Use Seth Godin’s ‘Purple Cow‘ concept – find a way to differentiate your event from other organizations offering walks, endurance events etc.
  • Ask your nonprofit staff to come down on event day to cheer event participants (has been consistently used successfully by YAI)
  • Don’t rely on one person to handle social media (Autism Speaks has devoted considerable resources to build huge audiences on both Facebook & Twitter)
  • Visit your organization’s programs and tell great stories (suggested by YAI)

Thanks to roundtable participants who shared their expertise: Scott Archimbaud, March of Dimes;  Paul Irwin-Dudek, Autism Speaks;  Papa Kofi F. Baffour-Awuah, YAI; and, Nancy Palo, National MS Society (NYC-SNY Chapter) and to David Hessekiel of the Run Walk Ride Fundraising Council who moderated the panel.

It was also great to see many friends from across the country such as Shana Masterson who attended with several of her co-workers from the American Diabetes Association, Jono Smith from Event 360, and a few attendees from the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation, where I first focused on managing peer to peer fundraising events.

What’s New in ePhilanthropy

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If you missed this week’s Social Media for Nonprofits NYC event, you can get a great summary from Big Duck’s Farra Trompeter, who presented a great step by step tutorial on implementing Multi-Channel Campaigns.  (More session slides from this and past events are available here.)  See also Kivi Leroux Miller’s post highlighting Convio’s recently released Multi-Channel Marketing Report.

Coming up with strong content is the key behind any online strategy.  As I and many of my nonprofit colleagues around the country do, I try to find the most worthwhile posts to share with my followers.  Beth Kanter explains that Content Creation is Listening and Engaging, then followed up with this look at Scoop.It as a way to organize your content.

How can you make your website more ‘social’?  Debra Askanase explains how and gives several examples of nonprofits that are doing this well, and will follow up with a Nten webinar next month.

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen says you must focus on essential content when writing for mobile platforms.  If you’re new to email marketing, learn about Email Marketing 2.0, then learn how segmentation can help you to get better results.

Finally, if you’re trying to find a format to send to your management to summarize social media and results of other online activity, Beth offers this guest post highlighting the Smithsonian Institution’s in-house dashboard, then suggests using a small pilot project to demonstrate the effectiveness of social media.

 

Too Much Content? Less is More

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OK, we’re all trying to keep up with email, Facebook, Twitter and now Google Plus.  So we’re scanning our messages quickly, and consider it an accomplishment when we’re ‘up to date’ (at least for a brief moment).  I’ve realized lately that sometimes less is more when it comes to actually absorbing the content we are reading.

Back when we were in school, we had to memorize facts so we could repeat them on a test.  Afterwards, we could clear our memory banks and start the process again.  Now that we’re ‘adults,’ there’s so much more information coming at us and it’s become increasingly difficult to retain the major ideas of what we’re reading.

I realized this recently when I found myself often sharing content with others that I hadn’t actually read beyond the brief Twitter summary or at best having read the first few sentences.  This became a bit embarrassing when others ask follow up questions about the content and I realize that I didn’t really understand the gist of what was said.

I recently read Hamlet’s Blackberry, which describes how many of us have become so distracted by constant access to information online that we can’t concentrate on any one article / post for more than a few seconds.  Interestingly, this isn’t a new phenomenon, but has happened every time a new type of communication channel has been introduced.

So do we turn down the spigot of information, and read less?  This can help, but more importantly, I’ve found that it helps to remind myself to focus a bit more on what I am reading online to make sure I’ve actually absorbed the material.  Especially if I want to share content and engage others, I have to be able to add my own insights to others’ thoughts.  Obviously I can’t do this if I haven’t taken the time to understand the content’s main messages.

By the way, if you’re spending this weekend on the beach and enjoying the sun and the surf, put the phone away so you can enjoy the moment.  Checking emails and the many social networks can wait.

What’s New in ePhilanthropy

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For best results in ephilanthropy initiatives, I’ve always advocated for an active partnership between Communications and Development.   Here’s more reasons why from Kivi Leroux Miller,  If you’re not getting the type of response you want from your nonprofit e-newsletters, Kivi also offers a free 15 day e-newsletter course at her Nonprofit Marketing Guide website. which offers many simple tips you can easily implement.

The debate continues on the new Google Plus.  Beth Kanter offers her take, as does Frogloop and TNW Social Media.  I believe there may be a benefit to adding your contacts manually, as it forces us to give some thought of who should be in each ‘circle.’  According to the Huffington Post, nonprofits are wasting no time in kicking the tires of Google’s answer to Facebook.

If your organization is undergoing a major change (as most of us do sooner or later), Peter De Jager provides many great resources on change management at Technobility.  See also Chaos is the New Normal.

Learn about fundraising and emarketing in Blackbaud’s Summer School webinar series which starts this week and, if you’re in NYC, attend next week’s 501 Tech Club meeting featuring how to get started with WordPress (which this blog uses).

As a follow-up to last week’s post on How to Make Your Projects Successful, Ben Lichtenwalner offers his Inverted Pyramid of Project Success.

Why Everyone is in Communications

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If you’ve followed my blog for awhile, you’re probably familiar with my theme that if you work for a nonprofit, you should be involved with fundraising, even if you don’t work in Development.  In my work with nonprofits for over ten years, I’ve helped to raise money online by project managing online campaigns and have worked directly with many fundraisers.  Although I’ve usually focused on technology, in my latest gig I’ve been part of a Communications group.

This week’s post by Big Duck on Embedding Communicators in Your Nonprofit explains how the role of Communications has changed as many more staff members are now speaking publicly about their organizations in blogs and in social media platforms.  So while Communications may still be considered the ‘official’ voice for channels such as the organization’s main web site, press releases, enewsletters, annual reports etc., there are many more opportunities for staff to spread the word about their nonprofit’s work. Rather than something that needs to be ‘controlled,’ this should be viewed as an opportunity to increase an organization’s outreach.

This trend also points to the importance of developing a social media policy, which I mentioned in this post earlier this year, so nonprofit staff have guidelines on how to talk about their nonprofit both online and off.

I’ve noticed that the most successful nonprofits often have environments where staff routinely collaborate, regardless of what department they work in.  This is especially important when implementing online initiatives, which require the participation of technology, communications and development staff.  It’s no surprise that this is most easily done in smaller nonprofits, such as Charity:Water, which I recently profiled, and Harlem Academy, which this week won the main prize at the New York Times Company 2011 Nonprofit Excellence Awards.   (Congrats also to City Harvest and Sanctuary for Families who were also recognized, as well as semi-finalists City Parks Foundation, Heart of Brooklyn and NYC Outward Bound.)

Recommendation – don’t think that only Development raises funds and only Communications represents your organization to the public.  It may have been that way in the past, but not today.

Lessons From Charity:Water

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At Friday’s Fundraising Day in NYC, I had the pleasure of learning online strategy from the nonprofit that has probably done it best in recent years.  In only five years of existence, Charity:Water has used a combination of compelling content and innovative outreach strategies to build a dedicated constituent base.  Digital Director Paull Young described their approach:

  • ask supporters to ‘give up their birthdays,’ offering a great ‘experience’ in return
  • focus on ‘sharing great content,’ not on asking for money
  • ‘uncomfortable transparency’ about exactly how donations are used
  • we ‘make the campaigner the hero,’ not the organization
  • goal is to have a ten year relationship with constituents
  • 100% reliance on social media / online – no direct mail
  • exceptional video – take a look at Water Changes Everything

After his session, I congratulated Paull on his success and asked whether some of Charity:Water’s techniques could work in a larger, less nimble nonprofit.  He pointed out that he had worked primarily with larger organizations before joining Charity:Water, then added that any nonprofit could do well by paying close attention to its culture and by ‘getting people with the right skills on staff.’  In our country where the availability of clean drinking water is usually taken for granted, it’s also impressive how this organization has developed such a huge following in such a short time.

As I also heard from several speakers during the event, you get the best results by developing the relationship with constituents first before making any ask.  And as Charity:Water has demonstrated, it’s critical to stay in touch to show supporters specifically how their contributions have helped the cause.

If you weren’t able to attend the event, several session handouts are available here.

What’s New in ePhilanthropy

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Social media expert Beth Kanter summarizes recent studies on how to increase Facebook engagement – it’s also a great way to find out what issues your constituents are most interested in.  Beth also outlines how to set SMART social media objectives.

To better understand how multichannel marketing works, read the recent DonorCentrics report and these write-ups from Frogloop, NonprofitTimes, The Agitator and Katya Andresen.  One step in the right direction – make sure your marketing/communications and fundraising are planning campaigns together.

How much resources should your nonprofit devote to a Twitter strategy?  Here’s Pew Internet‘s latest update on who’s using Twitter.  And in addition to having a Facebook like button on your website, you can add a Twitter follow button also.  Here’s also advice on the best days/times to tweet.

If you’re using integrated software like Convio, what stops you from using the tool most effectively?  Recent options like @ConvioHelp and live chat can be helpful, but my experience shows that issues with product usability often get in the way also.  My suggestion – make sure you take the time to train your staff on an ongoing basis.

Idealware also offers its own guideline on how to allocate your time between website, email and online outreach.

Attending Fundraising Day in New York this week?  If so, please look for me there.