Wired Causes

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Last week I presented at the NCTech4Good conference here in North Carolina.  What a great experience! Our session titled: Mobile for Today’s Nonprofits - was a combination of recent discussions held at the 2011 NTEN conference on the big four of mobile as well as an overview of findings from our recently published Whitepaper on consumer Smartphone usage titled: A Mobile World: how supporters are using their Smartphones, and why you should care. 

So first, the big four in mobile.  Our primary goal was to educate nonprofit leaders about the entire mobile channel -not just what many think when they hear ‘mobile’ - Text2Give. 

Big 4 #1: Mobile Websites.  Nonprofits need to embrace this as a necessary piece of their overall marketing strategy.  An early first step is creating mobile optimized landing pages for their most critical calls to action.   I chose to highlight the organization Soles4Souls – notice how their site looks on a desktop vs. a mobile device.  This example shows clearly how critical it is to select the most important calls to action – or risk losing the mobile visitor.  Do you study your site analytics to track how many visitors are connecting via a mobile browser?  I’d recommend starting – google analytics has this feature.   

Big 4 #2:  Next we highlighted SMS - of which a component of this is Text2Give.  I felt it was important to differentiate between the two to further educate nonprofits on the importance of not just raising money with mobile -but also delivering programs.  A great example of this was the Text4Baby campaign that I highlighted. 

Big 4 #3: Mobile applications.  There is much discussion these days over whether a nonprofit should venture into the mobile app world.  Some thought leaders even go so far as saying there is no need to do so.  My answer?  It depends: do you have a brand to uphold?  Is your target audience using Smartphones – or will they be soon?.  In the presentation I highlight the National Parks Conservation Association and how they created their app - not with the explicit intent to get more donations right away - but to grow a new engaged audience who will eventually be cultivated into supporters.  

Big 4 #4: Mobile Giving….ahhh yes.  You can raise money through mobile, even if you aren’t the American Red Cross.  While they paved the way for showing us how powerful mobile giving and mobile fundraising can be - I highlighted how important it is to begin with the basics before Text2Give. Look first at how your web donation page looks on a Smartphone – it’s time to ask WHY you should make it mobile optimized - and soon!

The second part of our presentation focused specifically on Smartphone usage. With sales continuing to skyrocket, user adoption could be as high as 50% of all mobile phones by the end of 2011 (this according to most experts).  When you look at some of the latest sales and usage statistics, like ComScore’s recent market share report – it’s probable this could happen sooner.    

My associate Anusha shared with the group the highlights from our Whitepaper.  We asked consumers how, when on their Smartphones vs. desktops, do they a) open emails? b)engage with websites? c.) Use applications? We found the results compelling – and hope you find it helpful in setting a strategy for incorporating mobile into your organizations’ marketing, communications and fundraising plans. 

View the presentation on slideshare - http://www.slideshare.net/smartonline/mobile-for-todays-nonprofits-7674094

Tonia Zampieri is Director of Marketing at Smart Online, Inc – a company that provides cross-Smartphone app solutions to the nonprofit sector. She holds an MA in Nonprofit Service, Leadership and Management and created one of the first nonprofit related mobile applications Tap-n-Give, previously available for download on iTunes.   You can follow her on Twitter at @iheartcharity 

Last week,  I faciltated a mini-workshop at the Silicon Valley/Peninsula Nonprofit Leadership Forum hosted by Compasspoint.  I’ve had the pleasure of working closely with Compasspoint as part of my continuing work as Visiting Scholar at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.   I enjoy it because I get double dose:   great ideas about the integration [...]

If you’re using social media as a key strategy to drive traffic to your site, this analysis from Outbrain (via eMarketer) is a dose of needed perspective.

Outbrain found social media referrals were “less engaged than those from search or other content sites, with fewer page views per session and a higher bounce rate.”  The most active readers came from referrals from content sites or search.  This makes intuitive sense to me.  Links from social media drive me to interesting places, but not necessarily sites I’m actively seeking because I have a problem to solve, information to find or action to take.  Interestingly, news and entertainment stories account for most sharing, accounting for nearly three-quarters of all social media referrals. eMarketer speculates this makes the media overestimate the attention that social media attracts to websites!  That’s a very clever observation—suggesting those in charge of covering social media see it as huge because it’s huge for them:

The bottom line?  Social media visitors to your site are often dabblers more than diehard supporters.  This is not to say you shouldn’t be engaged in social media or encouraging person-to-person sharing, but it’s important to recognize the commitment and interest level of the people who find you that way.  You have to do the hard work of engaging them when they find you. 

Tom Fishburne sums up the dangers of losing perspective with his typical wit:

Since I am a web developer, the core of my development workflow is, for sure, a browser. But not just one browser, or any browser. Several. Chrome has become my everyday browser, although Firefox is making its way back into my heart, now that Firefox 4 is so lean and zippy. But I am very [...]

By Web Server Software, I mean the software used to serve websites/pages. This includes databases, operating systems and other software that is involved in that process. On the proprietary side, there are two options. Proprietary Unix, and Microsoft Windows, and associated Microsoft Software. The current version of MS Server in use is Server 2008. Microsoft [...]

Last week, I attended an event for Georgetown University’s new Global Social Enterprise Initiative, led by Bill Novelli (a mentor/hero of mine).  The initiative at the McDonough School of Business will promote public-private partnerships that improve global health, economic growth, responsible investing, international development and a cleaner environment.  Bank of America is an early supporter.

Public-private partnership is certainly experiencing a renaissance and replacing antiquated CSR paradigms.  As one attendee put it, “CSR is dead; long live CSR.”

Darell Hammond, founder of Kaboom and a panelist at last week’s event, explained why: “Problems don’t come from single sectors, and the solutions won’t either… We have siloes of good: good business leaders, good nonprofit leaders, good foreign service leaders, etc.  What we need is a horizontal line among them.”

So how do you forge effective new alliances across sectors?  Reggie Van Lee of Booz Allen Hamilton, who also spoke at the event, had some good advice:

1. The social problem you’re tackling needs to be something all stakeholders perceive as a shared challenge that urgently needs addressing.

2. You need to assemble the people who share that perception into an organized entity with infrastructure.

3. Put in place rigorous program management, including managing to shared milestones.

Good advice.

Last week, I attended an event for Georgetown University’s new Global Social Enterprise Initiative, led by Bill Novelli (a mentor/hero of mine).  The initiative at the McDonough School of Business will promote public-private partnerships that improve global health, economic growth, responsible investing, international development and a cleaner environment.  Bank of America is an early supporter.

Public-private partnership is certainly experiencing a renaissance and replacing antiquated CSR paradigms.  As one attendee put it, “CSR is dead; long live CSR.” (CSR = corporate social responsibility)

Darell Hammond, founder of Kaboom and a panelist at last week’s event, explained why: “Problems don’t come from single sectors, and the solutions won’t either… We have siloes of good: good business leaders, good nonprofit leaders, good foreign service leaders, etc.  What we need is a horizontal line among them.”

So how do you forge effective new alliances across sectors?  Reggie Van Lee of Booz Allen Hamilton, who also spoke at the event, had some good advice:

1. The social problem you’re tackling needs to be something all stakeholders perceive as a shared challenge that urgently needs addressing.

2. You need to assemble the people who share that perception into an organized entity with infrastructure.

3. Put in place rigorous program management, including managing to shared milestones.

Good advice.