Tag Archives: DoSomething

Report from NYC 501 Tech Club

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Attended another enlightening NYC 501 Tech Club meeting last night, featuring mobile text messaging.  Speakers included Katrin Verclas of MobileActive, Jed Alpert of MobileCommons and DoSomething‘s George Weiner.

First, we were treated to a summary of 10 take-aways from South by Southwest for Nonprofits by Matt Koltermann of Cross-Cultural Solutions, an international volunteerism organization which I served as Director of IT and Internet Strategy from 2000-2003.  Matt’s comments echoed many thoughts I shared in this blog, such as the importance of cross-channel brand / message consistency and how segmentation of constituents allows your organization to utilize a targeted communicated strategy (i.e. don’t send everything to everyone).

Katrin reviewed the recent 2010 Nonprofit Text Messaging Benchmarks report and explained the importance of not only sharing stories, but looking at real data.    Clearly mobile outreach isn’t right for all organizations – it’s still a bit challenging to setup, is subject to strict rules on how it can be done, and donations are limited to either $5 or $10.  And in response to my question, mobile strategy isn’t only for nonprofits that are advocacy focused, but for any nonprofit that has a ‘forward thinking’ communications department.  At least until it becomes more widespread, mobile is still a great way to get someone’s attention quickly for a pressing issue;  emails often don’t get read and are buried in a flood of other messages.

Jed emphasized that mobile doesn’t supplant other types of messaging, but is best implemented as part of an integrated communications campaign , not as a standalone strategy (hmmm – seems like I’ve said this before).  He also added that supporters that receive a text message after email are 77% more likely to donate.  Interestingly, it was also pointed out that since many of us use mobile phones to check Facebook and Twitter, a nonprofit doesn’t necessarily have to do SMS messaging to reach constituents by phone – even if you don’t have their mobile number.

George provided a different perspective for his organization, which is clearly targeted towards encouraging young people to volunteer.  While this is a noble objective, it was a bit worrisome when an audience member’s question was responded by ‘you’re not in our target audience.’  (She pointed out that she had nieces and nephews that were in their target audience.)  While it’s true that you can’t build a web site that will appeal to all constituents, this might be taking things a bit too far.

Thanks to event organizers Charles Lenchner, Thomas Negron and Farra Trompeter.  If you’re coming to Atlanta next month for the Nonprofit Technology Conference, be sure to join the NYC 501 Tech group for a get together on April 8.

Using Social Networking Sites to Attract Constituents

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At the quarterly Not-for-Profit Webmaster Round Table meeting this week, I initiated a discussion on social networking, stimulated by Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal article, A New Generation Reinvents Philanthropy. In addition to the popular MySpace and Facebook sites, the article mentioned many new ways in which our supporters are finding to raise money for their favorite causes.

David Milner, who has run the webmaster group for several years, raised an interesting question.  If pages are created on these new sites and successfully generate interest in the organization, this will hopefully increase traffic to the nonprofit’s main web site.  But if the nonprofit maintains the MySpace and Facebook sites while neglecting its own web site, how will this come across to the constituent?  I also asked – how does the nonprofit decide which content to put on these sites while making sure there is consistency with its own web site?

The social networking sites present an interesting opportunity for us to engage a new audience.  It is likely that visitors will seek out an organization on these new networks before visiting an organization’s main web site.  So we’ll need to make sure that our nonprofits have a presence on these new sites while also keeping our own web sites fresh.  This will be a challenge, but it’s easier to go where our constituents are than hope that they’ll find our organization web sites.

In addition to MySpace Impact and Facebook’s Causes, other sites mentioned in the article that are attracting interest especially among younger constituents include Change.org, DoSomething, Firstgiving, GiveMeaning, Kiva and SixDegrees.