Wired Causes

You are browsing the archives of 2011 July.

Today and tomorrow here on the blog, I’m going to highlight a couple of fascinating psychological studies and take a stab at applying them to the work of nonprofit marketing.  Both were featured in Roger Dooley’s wonderful Neuromarketing blog.

First up is a study that shows that asking people about their intentions to do something increases the probability they will take action later.

According to Roger Dooley:

Researchers Jonathan Levav and Gavin Fitzsimons ran a series of experiments involving behavior prediction of activities like flossing, reading, and eating healthier foods. In each case, the subjects were more likely to engage in the behavior if they predicted they would do so. In addition, the researchers found that being able to visualize the behavior bolstered the effect.  There’s actually a large body of research on this topic. Other investigators have found that a statement of intent to purchase a car increases the probability of such a purchase in the ensuing months. One set of experiments performed by Chris Janiszewski and Elise Chandon showed that merely asking people about their intentions (dubbed “mere measurement” by social scientists) caused an increase in behaviors which were considered positive or pleasurable by the subjects and related the effects to “response fluency.” Perhaps the most relevant work for Neuromarketing readers is a paper published by Pierre Chandon, Vicki Morwitz, and Werner Reinartz, which found, measuring intentions increases the likelihood of repeat purchase incidence and shortens the time until the first repeat purchase.

So what’s a nonprofit marketer or fundraiser to do?

1. If you’re trying to get people to take action, ask for people to make a commitment to the action ahead of time.  It’s easier for people to agree to do something down the road than to take action now—and when the time for action comes, they’ll be more likely to follow through with your request.  Think about applying this to your programs, calls for volunteers or fundraising appeals.

2. If possible, get people to say yes to a future action in public.  This further increases the likelihood they will comply with your request later.  Pledges and petitions are great tools to try.

To paraphrase Roger - and apply this to nonprofits - here’s the bottom line:  Instead of telling people make a change or give you support, ask them first whether they are willing.  If they say yes, they will be well primed for taking action later.

After I posted a terrific 100,000 Homes campaign video earlier this week, several of you wonderful readers sent me your own videos.

Woody Bartley of A Chance for Bliss shared this video about his wonderful pet sanctuary.  He asked for advice – and kindly agreed to my posting his video and the advice here.  I also invited two super smart people to weigh in on the video – Mark Rovner and Alia McKee of Sea Change Strategies.  Here’s the video – and our advice.

Advice:

1. Cut the introduction from the video.  This is a case of telling not showing – telling us how to feel, telling us what we’re about to see and telling us why it matters.  It’s abstract and intangible.  Woody, you’re much better off diving into the real story right away, beginning with breakfast for the pups.  You had us at the pug in the diaper, so let that darling creature lead things off.  This reminds of another piece of advice we often give – throw out the first paragraph of your appeal.  It’s natural to warm up to a topic when you’re telling a story.  That’s fine for drafts.  But for prime time, you should delete the warm-up and get to the heart of things.

2. Cut the overall video length, unless this is a longer video meant to be shown at a gala.  For online, you want two minutes maximum.  Shorter is better – and more powerful.

3.  Punch up the call to action.  The video gets rather bleak at the end with all the language around limited resources.  Turn it to a positive with a stronger call to action at the end – Give us $X and we will do $x with a link.  People feel moved, so hit them with a specific ask.

Woody, thanks for sharing your work.  We wish you great success in fundraising, because the images of those animals will be with us for a long time to come!

Interested in TechSoup’s Microsoft Donation Program? Whether you are new or experienced with Microsoft donations, join us for a quick webinar to learn about the recently updated Microsoft donation program, restrictions, and additional benefits that will help you to get the most out of your donation request.

This webinar will help you to understand how the updates will affect your organization. This webinar is suited for all nonprofits and public libraries in the United States that are interested in requesting a Microsoft donation.

Details

• Date: Thursday, August 4
• Time: 10 a.m. Pacific (1 p.m. Eastern)
• Topic:  Microsoft Donation Program: How Does It Work?
• Register:  https://cc.readytalk.com/r/kr1×4oyfadx

Photo from the Guardian Weekly.  This is classic Phnom Penh.

Once upon a time, I lived in Africa and Asia, and that’s where I had the hardest, best job I’ve ever had. I was a foreign correspondent filing several stories a day, nearly every day, about an entire country.  (Like this from Madagascar and this from Cambodia.) It was fascinating and challenging to try to grasp the raw essence of what was happening – and to make it accessible, relevant and irresistible to readers around the world.  I didn’t always succeed.  In fact, I’m sure I often failed.  But the attempts were among the most rewarding and instructive experiences of my life.

Because I’m still a foreign correspondent.  And you are too. 

Let me explain.

I always liked that word - correspondent - because it made my job less terrifying and impossible.  That was a good thing, because much of the time I felt a fraud in a foreign land.  But the comfortable word correspondent implied the art of journalism was akin to writing letters home.  And I believe that to be true.  At its heart, the job is the act of creating a personal and absorbing account of something close to you – and making someone else feel they are close, too.  Even though they are miles away.

Isn’t that the job we all have right now?  You are working for a cause, and it’s not as intimately familiar to others as it is to you.  You might even say it’s foreign territory.  You have to find a way to correspond with others about its essence.  You must capture a complex reality in simple stories that speak volumes and move souls.  You are translator, writer and guide, all rolled into one.

That means the best advice for foreign correspondents is good advice for you.  Here are some of my favorites. 

“The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it.” -Edward R. Murrow

“You never monkey with the truth.” -Ben Bradlee

“A news story should be like a mini skirt on a pretty woman. Long enough to cover the subject but short enough to be interesting.” – anonymous editor in Texas

Be a foreign correspondent: human, truthful and short-and-sweet.

Living Case Studies: Social Media and Sustainable Agriculture View more presentations from Beth Kanter As part of my work this year as Visiting Scholar at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation,  I’m designing and delivering peer training sessions for grantees all around the theme of social media, learning, and measurement.   This year I’m more of [...]

The real value of technology is the experience it enables us to give our supporters and the people we serve. 

It should do three things:

1. Inspire: Grab our attention with amazing stories
2. Engage: Give us dynamic ways to participate
3. Catalyze: Make it easy and irresistible to act

Technology makes it possible for a charity of any size to deliver a far better experience at very little cost. We have no excuse not to do better, and it’s dangerous not to improve our engagement drastically. That’s because the evolution of technology means today’s consumer routinely expects—and receives—a social, intimate, interactive experience in nearly every online realm. When I order a Domino’s pizza online, I know the name of the person who put the pie in the oven and the exact time it started baking. When my daughter orders a pair of Converse sneakers online, she designs every detail, including the cupcake-motif upper canvas, then e-mails her creation to all of her friends. (I doubt Chuck Taylor saw cupcake Chucks coming.)

If technology can make even the most mundane purchase compelling, imagine what it could do with engaging with charity.

So who is doing this well?  Check out the best of the best from the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

And here are three nonprofit websites that rock and why.

Millennials (those young, tech savvy, and passionate younger donors) will – as I learned at last month’s Millennial Donor Summit.  Millennials don’t just want to write a check to your organization – they want to combine their personal passions and interests and engage others in your mission.     Are you facilitating this with your fundraising approaches? [...]

Back in April, DonorsChoose.org gave developers and data crunchers an opportunity to “hack education.” The contest challenged the public to build apps that improve education in the United States. Contestants developed apps and data analyses across seven categories, which were evaluated against a central question: Which app or analysis has the greatest potential to engage the public and impact education?

Choosing the Big Winner from 50 Entries

After participants submitted a total of 50 contest entries in the categories of PHP, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, .NET, and data analyses, they were then judged by respected experts in those communities. During the next stage of the competition, Arianna Huffington, Fred Wilson, and Wendy Kopp selected the main winner. He was announced by Stephen Colbert himself during the taping of the Colbert Report show on June 24, 2011. The winning app, designed by Michael Nutt, enables anyone to easily add a dynamic DonorsChoose.org project listing in an email signature.

Meet the Winners

An online showcase displays the projects of the Big Winner, 8 finalists and 25 additional contestants that wowed the judges and DonorsChoose.org staff. Get a taste for the creativity and ingenuity by checking out the category winners:

Data Analysis contest category winners:

 
“Hacking Education” Series by Lisa Zhang
An examination of the kinds of projects that teachers post and the kinds of projects that donors decided to support.
 
“Data->Knowledge->Insight” by Tiffany Bergin
A very user-friendly analysis of project funding trends.
 

Javascript contest category winner:

“DonorZon” by Jed Wood
Search on Amazon.com, and this browser extension shows related classroom projects within the Amazon UI.
 

.NET contest category winner:

“DonorsChoose Factbook” by Jeremy Kratz
On this user-friendly and dynamic dashboard, you can slice and dice an organization’s historical data by a number of facets, including date range and state.

PHP contest category winner:

“DonorsChoose Projects Near Me Wordpress Plugin” by John Mertens
This WordPress plugin determines the geographic location of each blog reader and displays nearby classroom projects.
 

Python contest category winner:

“DCJ2 The DonorsChoose.org Automatic Press Release System” by Max Shron and Mike Dewar
Automatically creates compelling summaries of completed classroom projects and notifies local television and newspaper journalists.

Ruby contest category winner:

“Donors Choose Signature” by Michael Nutt
Creates a dynamic email signature to show classroom projects in need of funding each time your email is viewed.
 

Wildcard contest category winner:

“Charity Chirpa” by Mark McSpadden
Suggests classroom projects you should recommend to your Twitter friends, based on your friends’ geographic locations.