Wired Causes

You are browsing the archives of 2010 May.

We loooove our hands-related logos in the nonprofit sector.

It reminds me of something Chris Forbes, of the upcoming Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits, ironically posted on Facebook this week: “Good idea for a nonprofit logo: Use a globe, Comic Sans Font and it’s gotta have a heart in it someplace.”

Yes, we are not always original.

Branding has to be better than this!

And it is.  This week, Brandraising author Sarah Durham and branding expert Nancy Schwartz discussed with me what branding really is (not just a logo) and how you can do far better with branding.

<a href=”http://www.amazon.com/Brandraising-Nonprofits-Visibility-Through-Communications/dp/0470527536″ title=””>

The key takeaways?

It’s not your logo.
It’s the intersection between what you stand for and what your audience perceives.
And you can do a lot to improve it by focusing on the entire experience your organization delivers.

Check out the conversation here.  The audio link is at the bottom of the page!

Loads of new research has been released in the last month that can help nonprofits be more strategic in their approach to their work. These studies have findings that have major meta level implications for senior leadership down to nitty gritty details for fundraisers. Here’s a round-up:

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TechSoup Microsoft NGO Connection Day
View more presentations from Beth Kanter.

I was honored to be the keynote speaker for the Bay Area Microsoft/TechSoup Global  Connection Day on Monday.   This post summarizes the content I shared in my presentation and offers some reflection on the conversational keynote.
Connecting With Colleagues
TechSoup Global was the co-sponsor and it was [...]

When I’m speaking to nonprofit professionals about social media, the first question they want answered is this: “Do we really need a Facebook page?” (That is unless they already have a page for their organization. Then they want to know: “How do I get more people to like me on
Facebook?”)

My answer is usually along the lines of, “It depends.”

It’s not the answer they want, but it’s the right answer. That’s because the truth is, these questions aren’t your best starting point in thinking about social media – or Facebook. If you’re contemplating committing time to engaging people on Facebook – and it does take time – you need to ask yourself a bunch of other questions first.

The first question you should ask yourself as a fundraiser is, do you have your most basic online outreach in place? You shouldn’t be committing staff to Facebook if you don’t have a decent website home page or can’t email supporters.

Before you think about Facebook, you should have:
• A well-branded, easy-to-use website
• The ability to process secure donations
• An email campaign tool that complies with federal anti-spam laws
• A website analytics tool (like Google Analytics)
• A listening tool (so you can monitor online conversations)
• Great follow-up for online donors and supporters
• Smooth integration between online and offline efforts
• Regular reporting on all of your efforts so you can learn and correct as you go

If you don’t have these things, I wouldn’t be doing my day job if I didn’t tell you that Network for Good can help.  Visit our For Nonprofits page and check out our DonateNow and EmailNow tools, as well as trainings and eBooks on all these topics. 

If you already have all of the above, you may be ready for the next step: creating a social media strategy. If you’re actively conducting online outreach, monitoring results and listening to what people are saying about your issue, you will be able to put together a realistic strategy that identifies an audience you want to engage – and a goal for that engagement. 

To help you maximize your success, Network for Good has asked Shabbir Imber Safdar and Shayna Englin to talk about what they learned in writing their new eBook on next week’s free Nonprofit 911® Teleconference - Tuesday, May 25 at 1 p.m. ET

They rightly point out that you are best off with clear, small goals that will give you sense of your progress and your return on investment for time spent on activities like Facebook engagement.  They have great advice on exactly how to accomplish this – and they speak from experience. They took a year’s worth of data from US Fund for UNICEF’s Facebook fan page and website, studied it, and used statistical methods to find connections between certain activity and success in click-throughs and donations. They found some amazing things about how posting frequency affects engagement, as well as some ways to optimize your work when there’s a high-profile disaster tied to your issue.

Tune in to the webinar to get the benefit of their analysis and advice – and access to their book. They’ll even tell you how to get more “likes” – once you have your strategy in place. I’ll give you a hint – the answer isn’t by using Facebook to relentlessly hit people up for money. It’s about building relationships with people. That’s what always works best – not just on Facebook but wherever and however you fundraise.

May you have many great relationships!

When I’m speaking to nonprofit professionals about social media, the first question they want answered is this: “Do we really need a Facebook page?” (That is unless they already have a page for their organization. Then they want to know: “How do I get more people to like me on
Facebook?”)

My answer is usually along the lines of, “It depends.”

It’s not the answer they want, but it’s the right answer. That’s because the truth is, these questions aren’t your best starting point in thinking about social media – or Facebook. If you’re contemplating committing time to engaging people on Facebook – and it does take time – you need to ask yourself a bunch of other questions first.

The first question you should ask yourself as a fundraiser is, do you have your most basic online outreach in place? You shouldn’t be committing staff to Facebook if you don’t have a decent website home page or can’t email supporters.

Before you think about Facebook, you should have:
• A well-branded, easy-to-use website
• The ability to process secure donations
• An email campaign tool that complies with federal anti-spam laws
• A website analytics tool (like Google Analytics)
• A listening tool (so you can monitor online conversations)
• Great follow-up for online donors and supporters
• Smooth integration between online and offline efforts
• Regular reporting on all of your efforts so you can learn and correct as you go

If you don’t have these things, I wouldn’t be doing my day job if I didn’t tell you that Network for Good can help.  Visit our For Nonprofits page and check out our DonateNow and EmailNow tools, as well as trainings and eBooks on all these topics. 

If you already have all of the above, you may be ready for the next step: creating a social media strategy. If you’re actively conducting online outreach, monitoring results and listening to what people are saying about your issue, you will be able to put together a realistic strategy that identifies an audience you want to engage – and a goal for that engagement. 

To help you maximize your success, Network for Good has asked Shabbir Imber Safdar and Shayna Englin to talk about what they learned in writing their new eBook on next week’s free Nonprofit 911® Teleconference - Tuesday, May 25 at 1 p.m. ET

They rightly point out that you are best off with clear, small goals that will give you sense of your progress and your return on investment for time spent on activities like Facebook engagement.  They have great advice on exactly how to accomplish this – and they speak from experience. They took a year’s worth of data from US Fund for UNICEF’s Facebook fan page and website, studied it, and used statistical methods to find connections between certain activity and success in click-throughs and donations. They found some amazing things about how posting frequency affects engagement, as well as some ways to optimize your work when there’s a high-profile disaster tied to your issue.

Tune in to the webinar to get the benefit of their analysis and advice – and access to their book. They’ll even tell you how to get more “likes” – once you have your strategy in place. I’ll give you a hint – the answer isn’t by using Facebook to relentlessly hit people up for money. It’s about building relationships with people. That’s what always works best – not just on Facebook but wherever and however you fundraise.

May you have many great relationships!

When I’m speaking to nonprofit professionals about social media, the first question they want answered is this: “Do we really need a Facebook page?” (That is unless they already have a page for their organization. Then they want to know: “How do I get more people to like me on
Facebook?”)

My answer is usually along the lines of, “It depends.”

It’s not the answer they want, but it’s the right answer. That’s because the truth is, these questions aren’t your best starting point in thinking about social media – or Facebook. If you’re contemplating committing time to engaging people on Facebook – and it does take time – you need to ask yourself a bunch of other questions first.

The first question you should ask yourself as a fundraiser is, do you have your most basic online outreach in place? You shouldn’t be committing staff to Facebook if you don’t have a decent website home page or can’t email supporters.

Before you think about Facebook, you should have:
• A well-branded, easy-to-use website
• The ability to process secure donations
• An email campaign tool that complies with federal anti-spam laws
• A website analytics tool (like Google Analytics)
• A listening tool (so you can monitor online conversations)
• Great follow-up for online donors and supporters
• Smooth integration between online and offline efforts
• Regular reporting on all of your efforts so you can learn and correct as you go

If you don’t have these things, I wouldn’t be doing my day job if I didn’t tell you that Network for Good can help.  Visit our For Nonprofits page and check out our DonateNow and EmailNow tools, as well as trainings and eBooks on all these topics. 

If you already have all of the above, you may be ready for the next step: creating a social media strategy. If you’re actively conducting online outreach, monitoring results and listening to what people are saying about your issue, you will be able to put together a realistic strategy that identifies an audience you want to engage – and a goal for that engagement. 

To help you maximize your success, Network for Good has asked Shabbir Imber Safdar and Shayna Englin to talk about what they learned in writing their new eBook on next week’s free Nonprofit 911® Teleconference - Tuesday, May 25 at 1 p.m. ET

They rightly point out that you are best off with clear, small goals that will give you sense of your progress and your return on investment for time spent on activities like Facebook engagement.  They have great advice on exactly how to accomplish this – and they speak from experience. They took a year’s worth of data from US Fund for UNICEF’s Facebook fan page and website, studied it, and used statistical methods to find connections between certain activity and success in click-throughs and donations. They found some amazing things about how posting frequency affects engagement, as well as some ways to optimize your work when there’s a high-profile disaster tied to your issue.

Tune in to the webinar to get the benefit of their analysis and advice – and access to their book. They’ll even tell you how to get more “likes” – once you have your strategy in place. I’ll give you a hint – the answer isn’t by using Facebook to relentlessly hit people up for money. It’s about building relationships with people. That’s what always works best – not just on Facebook but wherever and however you fundraise.

May you have many great relationships!

For six years, I’ve wanted to attend the highly regarded Personal Democracy Forum, but had scheduling conflicts. But pinch me, I’m attending this year – in New York on June 3rd and 4th to take part in the conversations that are driving real changes in technology, governance, and the non-profit world. [...]

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The Foundation Center has released Philanthropy Annual: 2009 Review, the third edition of its yearly compendium highlighting the news, issues, people, organizations, and giving trends shaping the field of philanthropy.

Get it for free here.

It includes an interview with me from last year.  Philanthropy News Digest spoke to me about how nonprofit marketing has evolved in an era of social media and ubiquitous connectivity and what organizations can do to better market their causes and raise funds in these uncertain economic times.I was asked what’s new and not under the sun in the world of nonprofit marketing and here’s what I said. I still think it holds true.  Do you?

PND: Your book was published in 2006. Has nonprofit marketing changed over the past few years?

KA : In some ways nothing has changed, and in some ways everything has changed. The fundamentals of how you motivate people to take action are timeless, so in that regard nothing has changed. Human beings
still want to feel good, still want a measure of psychic satisfaction when they support a nonprofit or a charitable cause. They want to feel that they are seen and heard in the world. They want to connect to causes they care about. And they want to feel they can trust the organizations they support. Those basic things are never going to change. What has changed significantly, however, are the technologies we now have at our disposal to connect us to audiences and spur people to take action. For instance, online fundraising — though still a relatively small percentage of total giving — is gaining in popularity. That’s great because people tend to give for deeply personal and emotional reasons, so if you can tap into someone’s emotions and make it easy for them to act on the impulse to give, that’s a powerful combination. Social media sites are also great tools because they take word-of-mouth marketing — one of the great drivers of charitable giving — and put it on steroids. It is now possible through sites like Facebook and Twitter to reach a huge number of people very efficiently. And those sites also function like a big focus group, in that they enable you to listen to lots of conversations and collect a lot of information about how people perceive your organization and your issue. Social media is a wonderful research tool and a wonderful
tool for connecting with others who care about your issue or cause.

Allison Fine and I have been working on an evaluation of the second America’s Giving Challenge. As part of the process, we are facilitating “Conversational Case Studies” that explore some of the themes that have surfaced from surveys.
This case study explores how a small nonprofit, Students for a Free Tibet (SFT), a contest winner [...]