What’s New in ePhilanthropy

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Norman Reiss

Among the many tips offered at Friday’s session on Facebook Tactics That Get Results offered by M&R Strategic Services and Nten was the reminder that very few Facebook fans will visit your page – they will mostly see your posts in their newsfeed. (So why invest in expensive custom Facebook tabs?) Surprisingly, you are penalized for posting from third party services such as Tweetdeck and HootSuite (read more on why these posts are less likely to appear in your newsfeed then if you post directly on Facebook).

How do you get more engagement – i.e. likes and comments, which will give your posts more visibility? Use different types of content, including photos and videos, and ask constituents to take a specific action – especially those that will result in providing their email address so you can build your list. (Did you know that you lose 18% of your list each year through unsubscribes and email addresses that no longer work?).

Idealware offers help on measuring your results on social media and Frogloop advises on how well as how you can manage data across multiple channels. Jocelyn Harmon offers some simple advice on why constituents don’t donate.

Many nonprofits rely heavily on volunteers, yet their importance has often been overshadowed by those of lucky to have ‘paid’ work. LinkedIn now offers a section to highlight volunteer experience and causes, which will help nonprofits to find its most loyal supporters.

Sept. 11 was a sad day, marking a decade since we lost almost three thousand people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. What can nonprofits learn when the unthinkable happens? Here are some lessons and another view of the effect on nonprofits as we recover from a very emotional day yesterday. Ten years ago, I worked for Cross-Cultural Solutions, which was able to help to coordinate recovery efforts in NYC after the horrible event.

Thoughts After a Hurricane

Posted on August 29, 2011 by Norman Reiss

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

Posted on August 18, 2011 by Norman Reiss

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

Posted on August 6, 2011 by Norman Reiss

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

Posted on July 31, 2011 by nhr2000

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.

Lessons From Charity:Water

Posted on June 12, 2011 by Norman Reiss

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

Posted on June 5, 2011 by Norman Reiss

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.

You Don’t Need to Recreate the Wheel

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Norman Reiss

Trying to figure out how your organization can be more effective online? There are many nonprofits that are already succeeding that you can learn from. Probably the most publicized success story in recent years is the astounding growth of charity: water, featured in a recent post by davidconnell.net. One particularly interesting point is how charity: water has partnered which local organizations that actually do much of their core work (the nonprofit didn’t build an infrastructure to do it themselves).

In addition, when charity: water communicates with its supporters, the focus is on the cause, not the organization. If your organization does many different things and you’re having difficulty what to focus on, take Katya Andresen’s suggestion to make modules out of your mission. Not all of your constituents will care about everything you do, but there is probably some program or activity that particularly interests them.

Hearing a lot about mobile? Nten‘s Holly Ross discusses 5 Nonprofits That Are Innovating with Mobile. Even if you decide that you don’t have the bandwidth for a mobile approach yet, don’t forget to test outgoing emails on cell phones since so many more constituents are reading emails on cell phones.

The old model of technology focused on getting support from product vendors. While I still work closely with my vendors’ customer support staffs, I also rely on checking in with my colleagues across the country, many who are asking the same questions as I am. (Some issues I’m currently working on are how can I increase engagement with my organization’s Facebook followers and how can I integrate online forms from my vendors in social media platforms – since this is where many of my constituents are spending time online, never reaching my nonprofit’s website).

Another way to learn from others is to follow the most frequently used nonprofit hashtags, as nicely summarized by Kerri Karvetski. (Don’t forget to use these hashtags when you post on Twitter!)

Fortunately, the nonprofit sector is a very open, sharing community. Instead of struggling on your own, take the time to learn from what other organizations have already done, and ask for help if you need assistance in making your nonprofit shine online. And don’t be afraid to fail. As I was recently reminded by social media superstar Danielle Brigida, most of us are still figuring things out, especially since online products / services are constantly changing.

What’s New in ePhilanthropy

Posted on May 8, 2011 by Norman Reiss

When developing a Facebook strategy, remember that your constituents don’t just want to hear about your organization. Andrea Barry explains how she adapted Idealware’s strategy to appeal to supporters’ desire to ‘be social.’

Planning a new website? Beaconfire reminds us to pay attention to content early, and to incorporate content into the wireframes. Techsoup also provides this overview into the redesign process. Big Duck suggests we put someone in charge of content creation. (Here’s my recent post on developing a content strategy.)

This week, I launched a new campaign for my organization through a combination of email marketing, website and social media strategies. It takes a lot of coordination, but you can’t just rely on one channel to get the word out. Read more tips on integrated marketing from Convio and EMC.

How often are you sending bulk emails? Hopefully you have some type of communications calendar. And don’t forget to review the statistics after your email goes out. Is your audience actually taking the action you are encouraging them to do? See also these ideas for email marketing to seniors.

Today is Mother’s Day. In addition to showing your mother how much you love her, also post her picture to support a new campaign to demonstrate that our parents want to protect Medicare benefits not only for themselves, but for their children and grandchildren.

Social Media for Social Good

Posted on May 1, 2011 by Norman Reiss

This week I had the pleasure of listening to a panel of social media experts at the Foundation Center’s Social Media for Social Good event. Speakers included Renee Alexander from US Fund for Unicef, Julia C. Smith from Idealist, Farra Trompeter from Big Duck and Nten‘s Amy Sample Ward, preceded by a presentation by Small Act‘s Casey Golden.

As might be expected during an event on social media, there was an active stream on Twitter, which you can review with the #SM4SG hashtag. Below are some highlights:

Mentioned several times this week and also by Danielle Brigida who recently spoke at the NYC 501 Tech Club, social media involves a lot of trial and error and experimentation. Often you will have to try different tactics before you find what will work best with your audience. Don’t be afraid to fail.
Engagement = stimulating a conversation and encouraging constituents to take action on issues.
Developing a social media policy for your organization will help guide your staff how to speak about your nonprofit online – look at the social media governance policy database and the social media policy generator for help.
Your social media policy should be a fluid, living document that is reviewed with staff and updated regularly, not in a book that is stored on a shelf.
On Twitter, in addition to sharing ideas from others you find worthwhile, make sure to include your own ideas too – the best Twitter streams have a mix of links, no links and original content. See this example of a Twitter engagement formula.
If your management is still uncertain whether social media is worth the effort, show what your competitors are doing online to engage and build their constituent base.

Want more resources? For a step by step process on how to use social media, download Idealware’s Nonprofit Social Media Decision Guide. For more guidance on developing a social media policy – Big Duck’s Measuring Your Impact and Creating Policies for Social Media. And for general tips on Twitter, read Mashable’s Twitter Guide Book

Social media is sexy, but don’t forget the online basics: make sure your website and email marketing program is in place. Social media works best when part of an overall communications strategy that includes any way you connect with your constituents, whether online or offline. Focus not only on your organization’s programs, but on the issues which your organization (and constituents) is most focused on.

Thanks to the Foundation Center’s Vanessa Schnaidt for moderating the discussion and to social media guru Jereme Bivins (who manages the Foundation Center’s Twitter stream) for planning this event.