Tag Archives: AFP

What I Learned This Week

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What’s especially nice about the nonprofit community is how generous everyone is in sharing their knowledge.  This week I attended the Westchester Chapter meeting of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, listened to webinars on Using Online Tools for Year End Fundraising, Rethinking Your eNewsletter Strategy, a session based on the recently released Nonprofit Social Media Decision Guide and Engaging Donors through Social Media .  Here’s a sampling of what I learned:

  • why it’s critical to have a strong case for support to present to constituents, and to make sure all staff understand it (not just development)
  • the importance of integrating fundraising with an organization’s overall planning process
  • use social media for stewardship;  use email, direct mail and telemarketing to deliver a strong ask
  • figure out your main objectives before starting a Facebook presence – is your main goal to:
    • encourage feedback / discussion
    • drive traffic to website
    • build email list
    • attract event attendees
  • plan to spend at least two hours / week  per channel on social media, but you will need to devote more time in the getting started phase
  • Facebook will soon be making available more functionality within tabs, so visitors may have less reason to go to main organization web site
  • when communicating with constituents:
    • send fewer words more often
    • talk about the future, not mainly about past events
    • write more about them, less about your nonprofit

I also raised this issue during the AFP event: how can an organization find a balance between aggressively pursuing its mission with the hope of ‘putting itself out of business’ within a specified time, e.g. Michael J. Fox Foundation, versus long term nonprofits which has been seeking a cure for a disease for a very long time, but still have much ground to cover?   My suggestion: keep reminding donors what their help has allowed your organization to accomplish, relating specific examples of how you’ve been able to help your target audience.  And keep saying ‘thank you’ – not just when you are seeking another contribution.

Please vote on which sessions you’d like to see at  Nten’s 2011 Nonprofit Technology Conference and pick your favorite slogan in the Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Awards.

For an example of how powerful video can be in communications, watch this incredibly touching one minute video by ALS Society of Canada.

Fundraising Tips / New Attention on Kiva

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Many articles lately on how supporters can be your strongest fundraisers: In Understanding the New Breed of Digital Donor,  Fundraising Success demonstrates how social media is enpowering supporters to fundraise on their own, with minimal involvement from the nonprofit they support.  In Enlisting Your Supporters to Fundraise For You, Idealware describes how friend-to-friend fundraising can be used.   In Donors Give Most When Friends Ask, AFP reviews a recent study on large gifts and reaches the same conclusion.  (Thanks to Kivi Leroux Miller for highlighting nonprofit communication recently.)

Congratulations to winners of America’s Giving Challenge, proving that even the smallest nonprofits can compete with the larger organizations by taking advantage of social media tools such as Facebook’s Causes application.  Social media guru Beth Kanter agrees.  Nten also offers ideas on how to Raise Money on Facebook.  See also Clicking for a Cause for more thoughts on how social media can help engage constituents and encourage  involvement with your cause.

David Roodman’s recent blog post and this week’s follow up NY Times article, questions are raised about the model of newer nonprofits such as Kiva and Global Giving which have supposedly allowed donors to decide specifically how their money will be used.   This has resulted in a recent change in Kiva now describing its mission as “connecting people through lending to alleviate proverty.’  My take – this shouldn’t stop the trend towards nonprofits giving donors more of a say in how their contributions will be used.  However, it does provide a wake up call on the importance of transparency in explaining how the process works.

ePhilanthropy Ideas from Around the Web

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mStoner provides an interesting look at How Donors Use the Internet.  Interestingly, success of a nonprofit’s web site can’t only be judged by the level of online donations, since many visitors will check out an organization online but continue to give offline.

Nonprofit Times reviews a study which discusses the value of email addresses: Get an Email Address, Generate Income, as well as other trends in online giving.

Association of Fundraising Professionals discusses a survey that suggests that Integrated Fundraising Activities (are a) Key to Success and that using a variety of approaches is best, although reminds us that developing relationships and major gifts are still critical components..

Finally, the blog A Small Change suggests that fundraising no longer needs to be restricted by geography in Fundraising Without Borders.

Bridging Divide between Fundraising and Marketing

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As I’ve become more involved in development issues, I joined the Association of Fundraising Professionals this year.  I recently received their Advancing Philanthropy bimonthly magazine which featured an article on how fundraising and marketing staff can work together.  Quoting a recent study which examined the relationship of marketing to other NPO departments, not working together can “lead to conflicts that substantially affect a nonprofit’s performance.”  Yet when constituents interact with a nonprofit, “they’re dealing with the organization as a whole.”

Instead, it is suggested that brand can act as a common thread that unites separate departments.  “Brand is everything you do, everything you are, everything you say.  Making sure that they are all consistent across different functions is essential.”  While I’ve never seen marketing and fundraising merged into a separate department, it does seem to make sense since “the roles that marketing and fundraising play in crafting a distinctive brand is complimentary,” according to Network for Good‘s CEO Bill Strahmann.

Brand is also critical in differentiating your organization from others that represent the same cause.  Jo Sullivan, who manages both development and communications at the ASPCA, has done especially well in this area.  The ASPCA is also represented on Facebook and MySpace.  (Some organizations are still debating whether or not to devote resources to social networking sites.)

How do you get NPO departments to work together and not in different directions?  At my current organization, we’ve occasionally had lunch meeting where one department will highlight projects it is working on;  judging by comments from other attendees, it’s clear that not everyone is on the same page.  Understanding the complementary objectives of fundraising and marketing is a vital step towards establishing a consistent image to our constituents.

P.S. Happy Thanksgiving.  Let’s be grateful for what we have every day of our lives.