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When was the last time you were approached by a stranger in the store asking for you to donate to a cause they cared about? Well, sure – it does happen. Especially around the holidays or for local events, but how often do you respond? For many people, the decision to give money is influenced by our peer networks and personal experiences. That’s why social media can be a valuable component of your online fundraising strategies. After all, it’s called “social” media for a reason!

You can think about online engagement as throwing a house party. Your website is your kitchen, where you can prepare the snacks, make the punch, and arrange all the utensils; in other words, that’s where you can create and store all your content. The social channels you set up are the various rooms in the house where guests gather, certain groups sticking together in certain rooms just as your community naturally segments across the web.

You can then offer up snacks and drinks or even start conversations or games based on who is in the room and what they might enjoy, just like you do when you share certain content on certain online profiles based on the sub-groups in your community engaging on each platform.

Social media, the place where you get to hang out with your party guests, is the social space where you not only connect with those you know, but you get to make introductions and meet new people. It’s your chance to have direct conversations with supporters, fans, and donors – conversations that happen in public so many more people can learn about and engage with you.

How does this support online fundraising? Social media is the place where you can change a donation ask from a stranger into a call to action from a friend. This is the space where you can equip your supporters with your message and help them carry your campaign to their own networks.

Here are three ways you can start using social media in your campaign today.

Find the Influencers: Social media is a great resource for identifying the champions in your community. For example, start following the common hashtags, watch for popular retweets on Twitter, and check out the commonly shared images and liked Pages on Facebook. You will start to see certain people and organizations rise to the top. Even if they don’t have big follower numbers, if they are the ones people in your community listen to and respond to, they are influencers. Invite them to participate in your campaign and share your call to donate.

Track the Flow: use social media to track how your campaign is being talked about and where the talking is taking place. Whether you’ve indicated a campaign- specific hashtag or not, use Bit.ly to check for those sharing your website or campaign uRl on Twitter and then see what the tweets say. check your website analytics to see which social platforms are sending traffic to your campaign page and follow the links to the people sharing your content.

Share the spotlight: Social media is an easy tool to use to say thank you to supporters and donors in public. By sharing recognition publicly, in real time, you can give people a feeling that you are excited for their contribution and see them standing out in the crowd. It also encourages others to participate when they see that the organization is there, interacting, and really engaging.

Those are just three ways to get started, but there are endless possibilities for building relationships, establishing trust, and truly engaging your community through social media to join your campaign.

Get the full ebook at: https://www.blackbaud.com/npexperts

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Who are you friends with on Facebook? Do you care who sees where you check in on FourSquare? Last month, Farra Trompeter of Big Duck and Danielle Bridgida of National Wildlife Federation presented at the Bridge Conference last week about personal and professional branding. In preparation for their presentation, they circulated a survey to over 200 nonprofit professionals, asking how they use various social platforms. The responses lean towards a reality in which our online presence is just as diverse as our offline personalities – people are connecting with a mix of others on difference platforms.

Are you mixing your personal and professional self online? Here are some helpful tips to keep you on your own message:

Use privacy options to your advantage! “72% of the 209 respondents describe their approaches to personal/professional use of social media as either ‘blended’ or ‘segmented by channel’.” Facebook friends aren’t created equal; or, rather, Facebook gives you the options to treat your friends differently. Use the functionality in the system to ensure you can share as much as you like, with the people you want to see it. Create lists so that you can easily add people as you connect with them, and set your privacy settings to some secure options like none of your photos or photos that you are tagged in are visible to people in your “work only” list. Similarly, Google+ allows you to filter general actions or content as well as post-by-post content to certain groups.

Set your own tone! According to Farra and Danielle’s survey respondents, Twitter is the top three platforms for both personal and professional use. Twitter doesn’t provide much room for a bio, but be sure to squeeze in a statement that “the views expressed here are my own” (or however you’d like to phrase it in your own way!). You can include a disclaimer in all of your profiles, actually! Additionally, on Facebook or any other social platform, you may want to include an explicit statement about who you want to connect with and how. For example, you could include a statement that says your personal friends are encouraged to make a friend request but that all professional contacts should subscribe to public posts – or whatever your preferred options are.

Be a social recommender! “Almost everyone uses LinkedIn, but hardly anyone asks for recommendations with any regularity (despite the fact that your LinkedIn profile is one of the top results for your name in Google).” The social Web is social because we are all humans, connecting and talking with each other. And it is the Web because we are connected and networked across and around the world. Don’t be shy: Ask for a recommendation, and give one to someone else! Think of it as the social media version of a good deed or social capital investments.

Choose your own path! “Most people tend to favor using blogs and LinkedIn ‘professionally’ and Foursquare, Google+, and Instagram ‘personally’.” Do you love taking photos of your kid (also known as the worlds cutest kid, I know!)? Not sure you want to overwhelm your professional network every evening with more photos of her cute face? You don’t have to mix your channels! You can keep that flickr account or Instagram profile private and shared with just your family and closest (photo-tolerant) friends. Even if you are a social media manager or a social tech lover, you can still claim profiles and platforms as purely personal or professional, especially if it means you enjoy the connections and content that much more. After all, some of this is supposed to be for fun, right?

I’d love to hear what you think about the results of Farra and Danielle’s survey: do you mix your profiles or use some for only personal or professional purposes? What are your tips for keeping them straight and managing your personal presence online?

[Photo credit: Flickr hassmanm]

Highlights

From 2009 to 2010, the open rate for organizations of all sizes and sectors declined by 12% on average. The fundraising response rate fell by 19%, while the advocacy response rate fell by 7%. Meanwhile, unsubscribe rates held steady from 2009 to 2010.

It is important to note that higher unsubscribe rates are often indicative of a highly responsive email file because both responding and unsubscribing indicate that people are opening and reading emails – so an organization with higher unsubscribe rates often also sees higher response rates. Those unsubscribe numbers don’t indicate that you should stop or change that message, but that you should work to more closely segment your list and target your messages.

Advocacy actions and items of personal interest tend to result in more click-throughs from newsletters. Accordingly, advocacy-focused Environmental and Wildlife / Animal Welfare groups had the highest click-through rates in this year’s study, followed by Health organizations, where many subscribers may have a personal connection. International organizations once again stood out for their low newsletter click-through rates.

Get Started Increasing Your Engagement

Tips to grow your list:

• Short sign-up forms – you just need their email, ultimately, and you can start building out their profile of what actions they take and how they engage
• Sign-up from anywhere – make sure you’re providing a way for people to sign up from the side bar or other clear area on every page and not just by finding your “contact us” page
• Create context for sign-ups – include options for people to stay informed about a topic from a blog post or an action alert by including a sign up form and a source tag (on the back end) for that topic
• Provide options for more – once someone signs up, share more ways they can stay informed and other lists they can join

Tips for segmenting your list:

• Super Advocates – these are the people that always click, sign, or respond; you want to start marking them as super advocates in your database so you can, first, ensure you don’t send them too many actions, and secondly target them at the start of campaigns or to spread your message
• Events – people that attended an event are more likely to care about follow up than the rest of your list so be sure you track who came so you can share pictures, details or next steps
• Action – to the furthest extent possible, you want to track the actions a member takes in your database and segment your messages by the kinds of action people have taken before and you want them to take now
• Source – keep track of how people signed up or what topics brought them to your list so you can target content and make your kinds of communication relevant
• Offline and Direct Mail – be sure to segment your list by folks who would have just received something from you in the mail, some times it works to do messages in tandem, and some times it just doesn’t

Tips for testing your messages:

• From field – do your messages currently come from “Your Organization”? Try switching that out with “Your Name, Your Organization” or try associating certain staff names with certain kids of content so members can start identifying voices in association with your emails
• Subject line – track the response rates to various subject lines and even break down your list into three parts and send the same email but with different subject lines to each to compare how they do
• Templates – some groups and some content are best suited to email templates that resemble your website, others are better with a message-specific design, and still others do better with few or more images, you just have to try!
• Pictures – try sending a message to your list but half receive it with a picture and the other half without, or try adding in a video vs a picture vs none, and so on
• Content – there’s lots to test and try with content from bullet points to quotes to different styles and pull-out boxes

Tips for starting email campaigns:

Resources

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Kivi Leroux Miller helps small nonprofits and communications departments of one make a big impression with smart, savvy communications and marketing. She’s a blogger, trainer, coach, and consultant. Her new book, “The Nonprofit Marketing Guide: High-Impact, Low-Cost Ways to Build Support for Your Good Cause,” is part survival guide and part nitty-gritty how-to handbook for nonprofit communicators.

What’s your story; how did you get started with nonprofit marketing?
Ever since college (which is going on 20 years ago), I don’t think more than a couple of months have gone by where I wasn’t serving on a nonprofit board, funding nonprofits as a grantmaker, or working for nonprofits as staff or as a consultant. When I moved from California to Washington DC in 1998 to be with my then-boyfriend, now-husband, I decided to start my own consulting company, which originally focused on writing for environmental groups, thus EcoScribe Communications was born. In 2007 I started to transition away from consulting for a few clients at a time to more writing, online training, and public speaking, which lets me connect with thousands of nonprofits every year. I love it!

What kind of organizations have you worked with?
My degree is in environmental science, so I started with environmental groups and then branched out to other progressive causes like animal welfare and HIV/AIDS support organizations. I’ve always preferred to work with smaller organizations because I felt like my impact was always greater there. Now that I’m doing online training, I’ve had small nonprofits in all 50 U.S. states, in nearly every Canadian province/territory, and more than two dozen other countries participate in webinars. They represent every kind of nonprofit you can think of!

What’s the difference between online and offline marketing – or is there one?
I think they are more alike than many people think — at least the people who get tied up focusing on the tools, rather than what they are trying to do with the tools. Good nonprofit marketing is all about knowing who is on the other side of the conversation and talking with them about your cause in ways that are meaningful for them, regardless of whether that conversation is taking place in person or over email or social media.

What are the biggest obstacles organizations face when it comes to successful marketing?
If you put aside basic resource issues of time and money, I think fear is actually one of the biggest obstacles. Nonprofits seem to be more acutely concerned than small businesses, for example, about what someone might think or what someone might say about this or that, and it makes them too cautious and conservative in their marketing. It’s like they just want to quietly blend in, when what they really need to do with their marketing is stand out! I talk about several ways to deal with that kind of fear in the book.

We know storytelling is important for grant applications and fundraising appeals, how is it most useful in marketing?
Stories are the best way to bring to life for people what it is you do. So many nonprofits have long lists of programs and services that are laden with jargon, and after you read them, you still don’t really understand what happens day in and day out. Stories provide the examples and the context for what nonprofits are doing. They are essential from a marketing perspective, because they are so much easier to remember and to pass on to others than straight facts and figures. They also usually contain an emotional punch that grabs you and sticks with you. The staying power of stories is really underestimated.

In your book, you use the term “Attitude of Gratitude” – just what does that mean?
It means that you embed being thankful into your everyday approach to your work. It’s easy for all of us, in both our personal lives and in our professional lives, to take others for granted. We all get too busy; we all start to expect more from the people who are good to us than we really deserve to (yes, I’m speaking from experience!).

On a practical level, having an attitude of gratitude means putting higher priority on getting your fundraising thank you letters out to your donors than on producing a newsletter that goes to your entire list. It also means reciprocating the generosity of others, which you can do with something as simple as a retweet.

With so many options for tools, products, and channels today, how do organizations keep marketing to a reasonable budget (while still making a big splash)?
Online marketing is so affordable that managing the time budget is actually a bigger challenge than managing the money budget. It all goes back to focusing on specific groups of people who you need to reach and selecting the tools that make is easiest to connect with them. The book is full of cost-saving and time-saving tips because all of the groups I work with have very limited quantities of both!

How can readers learn more about your work, your book, and follow the conversation?
NonprofitMarketingGuide.com is the home base. From there, I write a weekly e-newsletter and I  blog a couple of times a week. You can also find me on our Facebook Page and I’m kivilm on Twitter and Slideshare.

The book is available at Amazon.com and other online booksellers.

Submit your questions about The Nonprofit Marketing Guide today:

• Simply leave a question in the comments here to participate
• I’ll submit all questions to Kivi on June 5th, so only questions posted before then will be included

I’m really looking forward to gathering great questions from you all and hearing and learning from Kivi as she responds! She’s a great voice on nonprofit marketing and I think participating in the virtual book tour will be fun and valuable.  Let the questions begin!

“Nonprofit marketers say their key messages are failing to connect with the people who need to hear them and that is a serious problem.  The way nonprofits talk about themselves to the public is a core competency critical to any organization’s success. The bad news is that most nonprofits admittedly are doing a very poor job, despite a great deal of effort. The good news is that fixing the problem is highly do-able and promises vastly greater success than they are experiencing now.”

The survey results included:

Most Nonprofit Messages Don’t Connect Strongly with Key Audiences:
Eighty-four percent of 915 nonprofit leaders who completed the survey last month said their messages connect with their target audiences only somewhat or not at all. Respondents represented organizations of all size, issue focus and geographical location.

Behind the Disconnect—86% of Nonprofits Characterize Their Messages as Difficult to Remember:
Most nonprofits report that their messaging suffers from lack of inspiration (73%) and poor targeting to audience wants and needs (70%), and is difficult to remember (86%). Few communicators laud their messaging for its strengths: Only 13% of organizations characterize messaging as cogent while 8% describe their messaging as potent.

Here are some comments from survey participants explaining why their messages fail to connect:

• “Our messages need to be more succinct to communicate how effective we really are.”
• “We don’t move our base to action.”
• “We have individual elements that are OK solo, but no unified path.”
• “Our messages aren’t hard-hitting or targeted enough. So they fall flat.”
• “We need to shape messages that are simple enough for staff to remember and feel comfortable in repeating it to others.”
• “Too much jargon. I can’t even understand what we’re saying.”

Inconsistency Reigns, Leaving Confusion and Annoyance in Its Path:
Less than 50% of nonprofits report consistent use of their positioning (organizational tagline, positioning statement and talking points). That means that even though most organizations have taken the effort to craft messages, those messages aren’t used consistently across channels (website, direct mail, email), audiences or programs.

More information and complete survey results, plus specific recommendations on how nonprofits can start to immediately improve key messaging, are available at:
http://nancyschwartz.com/articles/index.php/messaging-crisis-for-nonprofits/

The 13 winners were selected from 60 finalists drawn from 1,702 nonprofit taglines submitted to the 2009 Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Awards competition. More than 4,800 nonprofit professionals cast votes in the final selection round.

The awards program is designed to encourage nonprofits to effectively use taglines, a high-impact, low-cost marketing tactic often overlooked or under-emphasized by nonprofits; Nancy says, “A nonprofit’s tagline is hands down the briefest, easiest and most effective way to communicate your organization’s identity.”

Nancy says that the winning taglines in the 2009 competition demonstrate how powerful taglines can work as a first step in branding or as a highly-effective tool to refresh a nonprofit’s messaging, emphasize its commitment to its work and/or revive tired positioning.

A great tagline can help people find you, too!  Searching on Google or even on Facebook for issues or ideas can tap into words in your tagline that may not be included in your organization’s name.

2009 TAGLINE AWARD WINNERS

Arts & Culture: Big Sky. Big Land. Big History. — Montana Historical Society

The Montana Historical Society takes its state’s most elemental and distinctive characteristics (Big Sky, Big Land) and deftly melds them with its mission in a way that generates excitement. The result is a tagline with punch and focus. And a big hit with voters.

Associations: Building community deep in the hearts of Texans —TexasNonprofits

TexasNonprofits’ tagline tweaks the title of an iconic American popular song from the 1940s and brilliantly connects it to the spirit, passion and mission of the state’s citizenry. A great example of how word play works in a tagline.

Civic Benefit: Holding Power Accountable — Common Cause

Common Cause’s tagline leaves no doubt about the organization’s mission, unique value and commitment. It’s definitive, with a powerful economy of words. An excellent example of the tagline clarifying the nonprofit’s focus, when the organization’s name alone doesn’t do so.

Education: A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste® — UNCF -The United Negro College Fund

This 38-year-old tagline from UNCF still rings strong. It elegantly delivers its straight up, powerful message. When your tagline is the boiled-down essence of your argument for support, you’ve achieved tagline bliss. That’s why this one is a classic.

Environment & Animals: Because the earth needs a good lawyer — Earthjustice

Earthjustice capitalizes on what people do understand – that a lawyer protects rights – and uses that framework to dramatically position its role and impact in the environmental movement. And it does so with humor. If your tagline makes people smile or light up, without stepping on your message, then you’ve made an emotional connection…Bravo.

Grantmaking: If you want to be remembered, do something memorable. — The Cleveland Foundation

It’s a rare tagline that manages to recruit people to its cause both unabashedly and effectively. That’s exactly what The Cleveland Foundation pulls off here. Clear, concise, and…memorable! A model for any organization promoting philanthropy.

Health & Sciences: Finding a cure now…so our daughters won’t have to. © — PA Breast Cancer Coalition

The PA Breast Cancer Coalition’s tagline is both emphatic and poignant. It strikes a deep emotional chord, and conveys the focus and impact of its work without being overly sentimental. “Finding a cure,” a highly used phrase for health organizations, is bolstered here by the appeal to solve a problem now so future generations won’t suffer from it.

Human Services: Filling pantries. Filling lives. — Houston Food Bank

With simple but effective use of word repetition, the Houston Food Bank clarifies its work and impact. It delivers on two distinct levels—the literal act of putting food on people’s shelves and the emotional payoff to donors and volunteers. An excellent example of a mission-driven tagline.

International, Foreign Affairs & National Security: Send a Net. Save a Life. — Nothing But Nets

Short, punchy and laser-sharp, the Nothing But Nets tagline connects the action with the outcome. It’s inspirational in the simplicity of its message and its reason for existing. The kind of tagline nonprofits should model.

Jobs & Workforce Development: Nothing Stops A Bullet Like A Job — Homeboy Industries

Homeboy Industries’ tagline is a mini-masterpiece, telling a memorable story in just six words. It stops you in your tracks, makes you want to learn more and sticks with you afterwards. That’s the kind of potent nonprofit messaging every organization desires.

Media: Telling stories that make a difference — Barefoot Workshops

If your organization’s name is vague, it’s critical that your tagline be distinct. Barefoot Workshops’ tagline sums up the transformative power of stories to create change in people and their communities, so clarifying the organization’s focus. Saved by the tagline!

Religion & Spiritual Development: Open hearts. Open minds. Open doors. — The people of The United Methodist Church

The work of religious organizations often operates on several planes at once — a challenge for any organization and its messaging. Here, The United Methodist Church delivers a tagline trinity that supports its applied faith mission and is warm, enthusiastic and embracing.

Other: A head for business. A heart for the world. — SIFE (Students In Free Enterprise)

If an organization’s identity contains within in it a distinct contrast between its key characteristics, that’s often good tagline material. Here, SIFE surprises with its crystal-clear tagline that conveys not only what’s unique about it but also capitalizes on the contrast between profit and compassion.

The full report will be out in November with more details about the 13 winners and all of the entries and more! For your free copy on publication, subscribe to the free Getting Attention e-update.

About the Tagline Awards

A strong tagline does double-duty — working to extend your organization’s name and mission, while delivering a focused, memorable and repeatable message to your base. It’s one of your most effective marketing tools, but the 2008 GettingAttention.org survey showed that 72% of nonprofit organizations don’t have a tagline or rate theirs as performing poorly.

I’m trying to change that with this annual award program, highlighting the best in nonprofit taglines.

For more information, visit this FAQ.

How to Enter

To enter, simply submit this entry form – it will only take a few minutes.

All entrants will receive a free copy of the fully-updated 2009 Nonprofit Tagline Report in late 2009. It’s the only complete guide to building your organizations’s brand in 8 words or less — filled with how-tos, don’t-dos and models.

Deadline to enter your organization in the contest is July 31st!

2008 Winners

View the list of winners of the 2008 Nonprofit Tagline Awards (selected by nearly 4,000 voters in the field).

This is a series that is recommended for folks who can answer yes to the following questions:

• Do you use an email tool or CRM to manage your email?
• Do you set up campaigns?
• Do you have a person or persons in your organization who are dedicated to online marketing?

After this series you will know how to:

• Create an online donor profile
• Identify and acquire new stakeholders
• Engage in conversations (vs. blasting) via email
• Analyze your results

Session Series includes:

• Getting to Know Your Online Stakeholders: Who are They and What Do They Want from You? (3/12/2009)
• Tactics for Finding More Online Donors, Members and Advocates : When Organic List Building Tactics Aren’t Enough (3/16/2009)
• Storytelling via Email (3/26/2009)
• Evaluating your Email Marketing Efforts for Success (4/2/2009)

> Register Now for the Series!

Presenters: Jocelyn Harmon, Director of Business Development for Triplex Interactive, a division of InfoGROUP, Alia McKee, Principal, Sea Change Strategies and Thomas Gensemer, Managing Partner, Blue State Digital (BSD).