Nonprofit Bridge

Social media expert Beth Kanter updated her list of listening, monitoring, engaging and management tools.  It’s not easy to measure the results of social networking, but it’s important to pick at least some of these programs, most which are free, to evaluate your efforts.   Here’s some questions to help evaluate your social media initiatives.   (Thanks also to Harish Rao for highlighting this topic for GrassrootsCamp at a live event this week in NYC.)

Network for Good‘s Katya Andresen explains why you can’t just focus on older donors, even though they have traditionally been the most reliable givers.   Older constituents are also getting more active in social media , per reviews in The Agitator.net and the Chronicle of Philanthropy of a recent Pew Internet report.

It’s challenging to change the name of a major event, but the March of Dimes used a variety of strategies to rebrand its major fundraising event (not all which worked well).

Courtesy of Big Duck’s blog, use these tips to revitalize your email subject lines.  (Sorry, email is still a valuable way to reach constituents, despite the rising role of social media.)

Finally, TechSoup asks what does your organization look like from the outside, reminding us of the importance of clear, consistent messaging across our online (and offline) communications.

Have a safe and restful Labor Day weekend.

While the daily newspaper may be a dying breed, I still find reasons to read the Wall Street Journal on my daily commute.  A few interesting items from yesterday’s edition:

• Tech Giants Ramp Up Their Online Offerings – Many large technology companies have resisted the move to online applications since they are often less profitable than traditional software.  It also requires firms to incur expenses (e.g. servers) that previously were paid by customers.  Unlike installed software, revenue from online products is spread over longer time periods, but may not last if customers don’t continue to use the product.  Except for financial software (Quicken) and sometimes MS Office, I use almost all online software now, yet online software still represents a small piece of the market.  But similar to the case of online donations vs. offline contributions, the market share is increasing rapidly – online software sales are rising more than 40% annually compared with 3.4% for all software.  Ultimately, companies will have to adapt since this is what many consumers want.
• Playing Well with Others -  While this article focuses on the relationship between marketing and R&D, its principles also relate to the benefits of collaboration which I’ve discussed previously, especially important when implementing online campaigns.  For example, does your nonprofit “make sure that everybody recognizes the value that each department brings to the process – and how one side complements the other”?  In many organizations, each department has its own goals and staff are evaluated by how well those objectives are achieved.  But the most important goals usually require many areas to collaborate, something which is still not a part of many organization environments.  It’s important to “get out of your silos” and “focus on the customer.”  In nonprofits, this can easily be translated to viewing your organization as the constituent does – as one.

Finally, are you making the most of your online communications channels?  Nten offers some useful examples of organizations that are doing it right in Online Communications That Don’t Suck. If you decide to embark on a web site redesign, Tech Soup offers Tips for Designing (or Redesigning) a Nonprofit Web Site.  My tip – even though it can be challenging to get everyone to work together (see above), make sure you include all stakeholders throughout the process.  Otherwise, you’ll end up with a site that no one is really happy with.  (And don’t forget to ask real constituents to provide input and feedback, don’t just ask others in your office.)