Talking Online Fundraising with the Center for Nonprofit Success

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Yesterday I had the pleasure of participating in a panel discussion about Online Fundraising: Harnessing Technology to Build and Maintain Relationships sponsored by the Center for Nonprofit Success.  My co-presenters included Olivia Harris of the Bond Street Theatre, Brian Reich, author of Shift and Reset, and Stephen Streicher of the Princeton University Pace Center for Civic Engagement.

We began the 3 1/2 hour session with brief presentations.  Olivia suggested engaging supporters to help raise funds, and suggested utilizing free research available from site such as HubSpot.  I then followed with ideas on how to Kick Start your Online Fundraising, such as tweaking your donation form and developing a multichannel approach.  Then Steve reminded us that good communication starts within our own organizations (if we can’t communicate well internally, how can we do it well with constituents?).  He also encouraged our audience (mostly small nonprofits) how even the smallest organization can be a big communicator using currently available tools.  Also, make sure donors can see their role in stories you share.

After a break, Brian challenged us to ‘stop doing what’s not working’ and that we measure our nonprofits not only to each other, but to online vendors such as Amazon since this is the type of customer service and responsiveness our constituents are accustomed to.  He also explained how phones have changed everything since we can ‘get information when we want it – don’t have to wait.’  In response to a question, he suggested (and I agree) that instead of only providing an annual report, we provide ongoing feedback to our donors on how their contributions are helping others.  (Kivi Leroux Miller also has many resources covering this topic.)

As expected, our extended interactive discussion with the audience was the most stimulating – for us and hopefully for them.  Some key takeways:

  • if you’re on Facebook, you MUST be ready to have a conversation, not just post updates.  If you’re not getting likes / comments to your posts, you need to try something different to encourage interaction
  • want a novel way to thank donors?  Do a monthly conference call with the ED, invite constituents to participate and record so others can listen later.
  • don’t build a mobile app (too expensive and high barrier to entry) – focus on having a web presence that is optimized for phones and tablets
  • you must use a tripod when making videos – no one will watch a shaky video
  • repurpose content for different communication channels, but make sure you optimize them for each platform

Thanks to everyone for participating in our session!

 

Why I’ll Be at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in April

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For those of us who are lucky enough to be working, it’s often difficult to get our organizations to support our participation in professional conferences.  Budgets are tight, and there’s much information available online and through free or low cost webinars.  My current organization isn’t able to sponsor my participation in this year’s Nonprofit Technology Conference, but I’ve arranged to go anyway.  Here’s why:

  • While there are many ways to keep in touch through social media, there’s no substitute for meeting people face to face.  Events like the NTC are often the only times I have the opportunity to reconnect with colleagues from other parts of the USA (and beyond)
  • The conference sessions are always interesting, but sometimes the greatest insights come from conversations I have at meals or other informal activities.
  • Spending time with a few thousand of my nonprofit colleagues reminds me that we are all facing similar challenges at our organizations, and can be more effective if we learn from each other
  • Those who attend the NTC come from a wide range of nonprofits of different sizes and missions, yet Nten always manages to provide something for everyone through a wide variety of offerings in technology, communications and fundraising topics
  • You may make a connection who will turn out to be your next boss (or someone who becomes a valuable addition to your staff)

If you’re fortunate to be able to attend this year’s conference, help someone who can’t by donating to the Nten Scholarship Fund.  And if you make it to San Francisco in April, please find me and say hello.

What’s New in ePhilanthropy

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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.

A Software Fable

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Suppose you join a small nonprofit organization with one office.  As the new IT person, you decide to build a software application to help the office to work more efficiently.  Everyone is anxious to see your results, so you push through the requirements gathering stage and come up with a reasonably good solution.  Your colleagues are pleased.  Management praises your work and all is well.

A short time later, your organization decides to open a second office, which has a different business focus than the first location.  But they ask if you can adapt your application for their needs, saying that they would like to go live in a month.  You try to get specific details about what they would like to see in the new system, but everyone is frantically busy and you end up having to make certain assumptions to revise the application for their needs.  But you push forward, and somehow are able to finish by the deadline.  Again, everyone is pleased.  Management again applauds your efforts.

Before you can savor your latest success, the first office asks if you can add some reports to the application which they hadn’t included in the original specifications.  (You had asked about reports, but were told that they would deal with that later.)  When reviewing their request, you realize that much of this information isn’t collected by the application, so you have to go back and revise some screens before creating the new reports.  And because of the tight deadline, you don’t have time to develop a front end interface to run the reports, but you say that’s OK because as the IT person, you can run them when requested.

You roll out the new reports and application changes, but then realize that your edits have broken something that is used by the first office.  So you need to go back and tweak the code a bit more and do more testing so that the application will work properly for both locations.  Due to some personnel changes at both locations, you also realize that you need to schedule user training.  And when they ask for user documentation, you realize that this was not done due to the rush to get things finished.

Eventually, your nonprofit keeps growing, and so does the use of your application was you originally designed for one office.  You keep making modifications, but these changes end up making the code increasingly complex.  (When you hire a new programmer to help you, it takes him months to figure out how everything works.)

Now your small application is in use by over 10 offices, all which use it a bit differently.  You’re now getting many requests for user support, and your tech support team can’t always help because they don’t fully understand how the application works.  When you speak to users from some of the earliest opened offices, you find out that many have established parallel systems in Excel and Access to handle situations that your software can’t accommodate.  Apparently, the business needs of your offices have changed so much that your application will need to be redesigned.

Finally you decide to have a meeting where you invite representatives from all of your offices to discuss what to do next.  Everyone says that their needs are unique and that they should receive special priority.  Many staff seem happy to continue using their personal spreadsheets and databases since it allows them to more easily manipulate and report on their data.  But your research department, which is trying to prepare organization wide reports to show the effectiveness of your work, is increasingly frustrated, saying that the data that they pull from your application is no longer accurate.

What to do next?  My recommendations:

  1. Evaluate hosted solutions.  Unless your business need is very unusual, there’s probably something else out there that will meet at least 75% of your needs.
  2. Look for the commonality between your offices’ work.  Even if you do end up having to build something yourself, there’s probably much functionality that will work for all.
  3. Decide up front what reports will be needed, and in what format.  Give users the ability to manage their own data, otherwise they’ll again be tempted to enter data again in a parallel system.
  4. Find out how other nonprofits of your type are handling similar requirements.  You may be able to learn from others’ experiences.
  5. Sometimes you will need to say no when you don’t have the time to do the job right, or if you’re not getting the cooperation from stakeholders in defining requirements.  Better to be unpopular in the short run than to be blamed later for a system which doesn’t work as expected.
  6. Use agile project management techniques to focus on short term deliverables.  This will allow you to more effectively respond to changing organization needs
  7. Provide ongoing training for both new and experienced staff members.  Most systems aren’t easy enough for people to easily ‘figure out’ how they work
  8. Get top management support, especially when you have to remind colleagues that not every request for program customizations can be handled.
But I’m sure this situation has never happened to you.  Right?

Blackbaud Will Buy Convio – My Thoughts

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Having watched many nonprofit vendors combine over the years, I probably shouldn’t be surprised by this week’s news that Blackbaud intends to acquire Convio.  But since the companies have taken such different paths with contrasting cultures, it’s hard to imagine that a merger will go smoothly and provide significant benefits to nonprofit customers.

Blackbaud’s most popular product has long been Raiser’s Edge, which provides unmatched functionality but is also beyond the financial reach of many small to medium nonprofits.  Despite efforts recently to make it more web based, RE is still primarily locally installed.  Of course Blackbaud has bought many other companies over the years which provide web options, such as eTapestry, Kintera, and PIDI, so many that it’s often hard to know how the multiple products all fit together.

In addition to its foundation online marketing platform (now Luminate), Convio took a significant risk by developing Common Ground, a web application built on Salesforce.  While Common Ground offers much less functionality than software like Raiser’s Edge, it offers the strong advantage of being able to connect well with other products due to its Salesforce infrastructure.  (Integration between platforms has been a major issue at every nonprofit I’ve worked for.)

While Blackbaud has been most active in acquisitions, let’s not forget that Convio also bought GetActive – and the transition of GetActive customers to the Convio platform was long and painful.

As many of my colleagues have said this week, it’s hard to know how this acquisition will pan out, and which products will continue to be maintained.  I have friends at both Blackbaud and Convio, and I can only hope that the inevitable personnel shakeup will be handled respectfully.

In my view, this merger may have the effect of reducing competition and innovation, which is always a bad thing.  However, this may also be a wake up call for those organizations who have not discovered the benefits of using open source solutions which are not tied to the fate of a particular vendor.

If you’re on the Progressive Exchange and Nten email lists, I encourage you to read the comments of my colleagues Peter Campbell, Michelle Murrain, Robert Weiner , Allen Gunn on Aspiration Tech and Alyson Kapin’s on Frogloop.  Also see Nten’s take and then join the free Nten conference call this Wednesday to further sort out what is likely to come next.

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

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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?

More Highlights from 5 Years of Nonprofit Bridge

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More blasts from past posts from Nonprofit Bridge:

How a nonprofit is organized can greatly impact its online success.  From mid-2008, here’s Building a Successful Online Team.  In mid-2009, I followed up with a review of Convio‘s study on Why Organization Structure Matters.  Then in early 2011, I offered this Job Description for an Integrated Fundraising / Communications Position.

For more advice on digital strategy, read Tips for Online Success and How to Succeed Online – Even When You Think You Can’t.  It’s always worthwhile to learn from those who are doing it well in Practical Examples of Cross-Channel Success.

Website redesign is often a challenging process.  Here’s some Reasons Why (and Why Not) to Do a Website Redesign, and some additional tips.

Creating great content is key to engaging constituents.  Learn How to Develop Content Your Constituents Will Want to Read, how to Develop a Content Strategy and then What Content to Put in Each Channel.

Most nonprofits need to partner with companies who provide hosted software.  Here’s how to get the most of the relationship in Tips in Selecting and Working With an Online Vendor.

Do you give and attend webinars?  Here’s tips on how to present and how to get the most from participating in online events.

Finally, the hottest topics now are social media and mobile / tablets.  Read Insights into Developing a Social Media Strategy and my take last year on the New World of Mobile.

Thank you again for following my thoughts on the intersection of technology, communications and development for nonprofit organizations.

Reviewing 5 Years at Nonprofit Bridge

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Next month will mark my fifth year since beginning my blog at Nonprofit Bridge.  Since my first post on Jan 23, 2007, I’ve expanded my focus well beyond technology and providing a place for ‘positive thoughts.’  Below is part 1 of my favorite posts (to be continued next week):

More highlights from past posts next week.  Meanwhile, thank you for reading my thoughts for the past five years.  I wish you a wonderful 2012!

Are You Working Between the Holidays?

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I’ll be in the office next week, as I suspect many of you will be (especially if you are wrapping up your year-end fundraising campaign).  Here’s some ideas to contemplate for for 2012:

  1. Ask some friends (who aren’t familiar with your organization) to critique your nonprofit’s website.  Are they able to quickly understand what you do?  Is it easy to donate or sign up for your email list?
  2. Analyze your website analytics, Facebook insights data so you know what’s working best with your constituents.  And don’t forget to segment your audience.  Debra Askanase explains more
  3. Go back to the basics – find new ways to build your email list (via Idealware)
  4. Encourage your staff’s professional development by supporting their participation in organizations such as Nten, which will have its annual conference in April and sponsors informational webinars and live 501 Tech meetings throughout the US throughout the year.
  5. Saying thank you to donors is always an good idea, but it’s also crucial to make sure your staff and volunteers feel appreciated for their hard work.  As my friend Shana Masterson recently tweeted, “You might not be in a position to reward someone (financially), but u can always acknowledge the work they’ve done.”
  6. To make your meetings your effective, make sure an agenda goes out to participants in advance and a summary is sent shortly afterwards – it’s a simple project management technique that can insure that everyone’s on the same page
  7. Help someone who is in transition.  While unemployment figures seem to be dropping a bit, there are still many people who are struggling.  Reach out to colleagues who need encouragement and support.

Have a healthy and peaceful holiday and a wonderful new year.