Tag Archive for 'fundraising'

Quick thoughts on the economy and nonprofits

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on October 6, 2008
in issues
. 2 Comments

The economic crisis is hitting hard in the US and beyond (now situated in London, similar lay offs are taking place with banks here, too!).  Many nonprofits are feeling the economic crunch as well.  I wanted to direct your attention to two conversations:

  1. Meyer Memorial Trust’s recent blog asks nonprofits how they are dealing with the crunch
    I am always impressed by the level of conversation, honesty, and engagement MMT’s blog presents both in content and comments.  Check it out!
  2. NPR’s segment on assessing the impact of the crisis on nonprofits
    All Things Considers discusses nonprofits’ income streams in threat (corporate grants, etc.)  Listen here!

So, what do you think?  How has your nonprofit been affected, taken note, or answered funding questions about the financial crisis?

Asking this question on Twitter started some conversations!  Here are some recent posts:

TheDogLover @amyrsward interesting Twit… a lot of my work is for non profit. I am waiting to hear  for next year.  scary

gwalter @amyrsward As far as I know, there have not been discussions re: non-profit cashflow.

howardlake @amyrsward Try ‘Recession and Charities’ PDF from Cathy Pharoah and co at Centre for Ch Giving + Philanthropy this month: http://is.gd/3BsL

NAFund @amyrsward we’ve been thinking a lot about this, & how to helps nps - but so much is still in flux. it’s early to really guage the impact

I just started a discussion topic in the TechSoup Forums so we can continue to discuss the impact of the financial crisis on nonprofits and what we can do about it.  Contribute to the conversation!

Help me help teachers with technology!

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on October 1, 2008
in fundraising
. 0 Comments

DonorsChoose logoToday is the start of October’s BloggersChallenge with DonorsChoose.org and I’m a blogger stepping up to the challenge.  Let’s help classrooms in need of technology!

Last year, the BloggersChallenge raised $500,000 through the help of nearly 50 bloggers!  I’m excited to see the impact we can make for classrooms looking to use technology in the way they learn, share, and collaborate together.

Why Technology?

I use technology every day, and can’t really function effectively without much of it.  Just think about the impact simple tools like a digital camera or headphones make on the way we are able to share with my family, friends and colleagues on a daily basis by sharing photos or using the internet to make a call and connect personally—don’t you want those simple tools available in classrooms?  I’ve selected proposals from teachers integrating technology into their classrooms to make learning exciting and effective.

Why DonorsChoose?

DonorsChoose.org is an organization and an idea that I really like: the simplicity and the purpose.  Connecting teachers directly with people who could help them in their classroom, whether they are interested because they share a geography, a subject matter, or just an awesome idea for igniting learning in students.  I also added the DonorsChoose recommended actions from Social Actions earlier this summer.

What can I do?

Please participate this month in the BloggersChallenge, here’s how you can get going now:

  1. Support classroom projects by donating!
  2. Find more projects you think should be added to our Challenge, just put a link in the comments and I can add them to our challenge page!
  3. Send this link to others to participate and donate!

I’m excited to tackle this challenge together.  Let’s make a difference in classrooms across the US!

Online Engagement: London Fundraising Summit

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on September 25, 2008
in events and fundraising
. 0 Comments

Today was the second day of the London Fundraising Summit from the Center for Nonprofit Success.  I presented with Jonathan Waddingham, the Charity Champion at JustGiving.org, about online engagement and fundraising.  It was a three-hour session and we could have gone all day!  Great attendees, conversations, and learning taking place.

Jonathan’s presentation focused on some great examples of nonprofits using a range of social media tools.  My presentation concentrated on the why and how side of things, including some examples from the e-Nonprofit Benchmarks report.  You can see Jonathan’s slides here.  After our presentations, we had a few rounds of small group activities with short scenarios and prompts calling on the new online engagement and fundraising ideas Jonathan and I talked about.  The groups did an excellent job creating strategies for engaging their fake organizations’ communities.  Thanks so much to everyone who was there!

Here is my presentation:

Lfs Online Fundraising Preso Asw

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: engagement fundraising)

Here is the PDF version with all my speaker notes:

LFS Online Fundraising PDF Asw
View SlideShare document or Upload your own. (tags: engagement fundraising)

My main points included:

Conversations = Conversions

  • shouting rarely works!
  • two way conversation empowers your constituents and the larger community to:
    - give you feedback when things are bad
    - give you praise when they are happy
    - ask questions
    - get involved
  • two way conversations also turn your staff into real people.
  • if a conversation is taking place online and you aren’t there to hear it, does it still happen?  YES!
  • by putting yourself and your organization online, you can be part of the conversation that is already taking place.

Management = Messages

  • people are all different, even if they are all interested in your organization.  what they want to do for you, how they want to hear from you, what they plan to say about you and even how they want to support you.
  • comprehensive donor/volunteer/constituent management software will let you track, trace, separate
    and sort your members.
  • better messages means more messages, but not drastically different.  just enough so that your online
    activists have something they can do when they get an email from you, your donors can donate, your
    supporters can spread the word, and your lurkers can keep hanging on.

Testing

  • testing can be small scale to large scale - really just depends on your budget, your time, and your staff capacity.
  • start small and in-house and see how much you can learn right away
  • try changing simple things with small groups: subject lines, images, calls to action, etc.

If you were at the session today, what questions did you leave with?  What conversations helped you the most?

Tu Diabetes Fundraises with YouTube, do you?

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on September 11, 2008
in case studies and fundraising
. 3 Comments

Originally posted on the NetSquared blog.

I recently wrote about Tu Diabetes’ use of Twitter and the strategies the online community has employed to find and engage with new people. Today, I want to take a look at another social media tool Tu Diabetes is using successfully: YouTube.

YouTube is an online video tool “allowing millions of people to discover, watch and share originally-created videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small.”

Tu Diabetes has a YouTube channel with over 60 videos and over 70 subscriptions. Manny Hernandez, community founder, explained the group’s YouTube strategies to me recently.

I asked Manny what the original idea or example was that got Tu Diabetes using YouTube for fundraising. Manny said that Tu Diabetes adopted video as a tool to communicate with members since the very beginning. Early on, before they were even a non-profit (2007) they produced weekly podcasts to summarize the highlights in the community and do a member update. (You can see an example here.) All the videos included on YouTube have previously been posted in the video section on TuDiabetes.com (or EsTuDiabetes.com, if they are in Spanish).

I think the power and success of fundraising with video is one of the most interesting aspects of Tu Diabetes’ use of YouTube. Manny said that, so far, ALL the funds raised through the members (close to $3,500) since they started the fundraising campaign have been tied to video-based-asks. We have had three videos during the campaign so far, which started in June, with each one getting more and more on target:

One of the most frequently asked questions I come across when organizations are considering using videos on organizational websites or places like YouTube is the burden of resources, costs, etc. For Tu Diabetes, the only technical resources used are Mac-based. Manny shot the first two using the built-in iSight camera on his MacBook. The most recent one was done on his wife’s Mac Pro, combining images posted by our members in the community. All videos were edited using iMovie. The most recent one had music donated by the duo Hammock (one of his favorite bands - http://hammockmusic.com).

It is important to keep in mind the goals an organization has when considering the use/adoption of social media tools, because there are just so many to choose from. One of the goals of the Diabetes Hands Foundation is to raise diabetes awareness. Based on that, you have to look at video views. The most viewed videos to date are here: the Drawing Diabetes video with close to 27,000 views, and the Word In Your Hand video with close to 2,500 views + several thousand more views through TuDiabetes and other outlets.

The other goal is to help connect people touched by diabetes (they’ve found diabetes to be a “closet” condition where people that have it barely talk about it with others). Based on this, the Spanish videos have been the most successful, resulting in proportionally many more people touched by diabetes joining the community (EsTuDiabetes.com). Manny thinks this is because there is a bigger need for Spanish content about diabetes and, specifically, content that people can understand easily.

Social media tools are ultimately about building community and making connections between the organization and new members. With YouTube, Tu Diabetes reaches out to new members. They do periodic searches for “diabetes” on YouTube and leave relevant comments to people who also share their diabetes stories on YT. It is very important that the comments be contextual and valuable. We take the opportunity to tell people about the community. Normally invitations to join result in people joining.

Besides YouTube, Tu Diabetes has used:

So, what are the future plans for Tu Diabetes’ use of YouTube? They are currently waiting on the approval of 501c3 status. Once approved, they will be able to take full advantage of the YouTube for Nonprofits program. Tu Diabetes will continue to publish video content, which they do on the YouTube channel, because they feel it is a great means to accomplish the goal of raising diabetes awareness.

What do you think about Tu Diabetes’ use of YouTube? Has your organization considered using videos on your website or on a public channel like YouTube? What goals would you want to address with the help of video?  Comment with the Net Squared community, too!

Digital Makeover Project: More thoughts on community tools

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on July 12, 2008
in issues and socialmedia
. 1 Comment

I posted a few days ago about Simon Fairway ’s Digital Makeover Project focusing on South Yorkshire Funding Advice Bureau . I didn’t get all of my thoughts out in that previous post, as they relate to the Issues and Priorities outline that Simon and the team put together.

User generated content vs traditional top-down information
 I think with a web site such as SYFAB’s it is a great community building strategy to integrate ways that funding advice could be given by peers as well as the SYFAB staff. Moving some of the request, information gathering, and sharing process online in a public forum-like way, could really encourage participation in the process. People who may have already gone through what someone else is asking about can provide their insights or information while the staff can supplement with data they usually provide.

Communication is difficult with outreach workers/volunteers
I wonder if establishing some basic protocols that include Google Docs or a wiki could help contain conversations or questions to an easily accessed, web-based document. Is a wiki or shared document something that other groups have used to coordinate remote and in-office workers? I am thinking of examples with campaign staff/volunteers and rural nonprofits.

Newsletter is in PDF/mailed
(You can read about this and the other issue areas in the Issue and Priorities document for the project.)  One of the most important aspects of the newsletter is the event and training listings.  What about creating an online calendar on the website, where events, trainings, workshops, major conferences, and even grant deadlines could all be displayed and easily updated?  Sounds like a great way to add value to the SYFAB website.  You could even allow for others to add to the calendar, or submit information for staff to add.  Then the SYFAB calendar would be the go-to place to find out what was going on in the funding field.

Capturing feedback
One of the easiest ways for organizations to create a feedback form without technical expertise is to use SurveyMonkey or other free online survey tools .  You don’t need to know any html or other coding, don’t need to make any forms on your website.  You can create a survey that captures all the information you are hoping to get from users of the site or of a particular program, and even add your logo and other branding materials to confirm to users that it really is your survey.  This let’s you ask for feedback, collect the feedback and analyze it in a web-based platform so there aren’t any lost emails or misplaced paper forms.

Fundraising options
As the Funding Advice Bureau, you want to be sure that you have enough funds to keep helping others secure monies as well!  An online donation process would be easy, as you would just need to set it up and place the donate button on the website.  Checking to make sure that SYFAB is listed in online platforms like Causes and Change.org will allow people around the world using these platforms to connect causes and fundraising with your organization.

What ideas or comments do you have about the above options?  Do any of them reflect conversations or issues your organization’s staff has also faced?  What have been the major conversations points when discussing these issues in your organization?

Thoughts on Millenials and political action

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on May 22, 2008
in issues and socialmedia
. 0 Comments

About a year ago, I sat down to write two white papers on issues I had rumbling around in my head that involved the changing roles, as I saw it, of nonprofit organizations and foundations as well as the changing relationship between those organizations and citizens.  Trust me that had I finished writing those, you would have been privy as they would have been up on the blog.  Needless to say, my brain was taken over by work as is the problem that always comes up, and they remain strings of thoughts in text files on my computer.

Today, I finally made a little time to read through Social Citizens from Allison Fine and The Case Foundation.  It tore apart all of the other things I was thinking about today and threw me back into the subject of those white papers from last year.  It was wonderful!  So, I took it as a sign that I needed to get some of those thoughts out to you all this time around.  Keep in mind that these are my thoughts and I would love a chance (read: the time) to expand on them fully, so I apologize for the brevity.  Also, these ideas do not only sprout from this recent publication, obviously, but are inspired through many reports and from my own experiences as a Millenial.

Changing Role of Nonprofits and Foundations

Because so much of the organizing and activism, and thus information and opinion, around issues is done in networks of friends and family, the problem with access to both sides of the story and the opportunity for an independent and unique opinion grows.  As views are shaped by those closest to the individual, there is much less of a chance for a network-created cause or action to include full dialogue of an issue.

Nonprofits and foundations will continue to be tied to causes, changes, actions, and groups that form in social networks and elsewhere on the web.  The role these organizations have in the relationship will change to incorporate the need for access to the big picture.

Nonprofits and foundations will become sources for information and reliable reporting.  They will be the places that personalized campaigns link to for the background and continued data on an issue.  As the fundraising and momentum building moves more and more into the hands of supporters across the web and around the world, the relationship with the aligned organizations changes to reallocate responsibilities.  As information, data, and reporting providers, these organizations will work to ensure that the multitude of unique campaigns taking place simultaneously by supporters provide an opportunity for those networks and potential interested citizens to learn more (and act more).

Changing Expectations of Government and Corporations

Millenials feel political change by individuals is impossible and that political actions like voting and participating in the political arena as it currently exists do not have the impact they want.  This doesn’t mean that young voters aren’t turning out, as we see from the numbers in 2004 and so far in the primaries that the youth vote is taking a big upswing.  But, young voters view their action closer to a symbolic step than a concrete motion.

Millenials are also very concerned about and aware of the cause-related work that corporations are involved in, choosing to support (or purchase from) organizations that are environmentally conscious, giving back to the community, and/or contributing to changing social problems.  Young people report, as it says in the report, having more confidence in corporations than they do in the government.

This could mean that instead of groups of citizens urging politicians and policymakers to make changes around issues or specific legislation, that citizens instead turn to corporations who are aligned with those issues and support them in pressuring the government.  Standing behind more than just a product, but trusting in the clout of a corporation to swing policymakers.

To go further, this could even have implications for key supporters to have a ‘role’ (of some sort) in the leadership of the corporation.  This would complete the circle of accountability between the corporation and the supporters who have chosen to be loyal to the organization because of the issue alignment.

Changing Identity

In previous generations, personal identify was defined by career/job title and field.  You were an engineer or a teacher or a scientist.  That meant something when you said it to a new acquaintance and similarly created automatic circles of colleagues even if you hadn’t met personally.

Now, as taking action for Millenials has become incredibly important and easy via the social communities and world of the web, who you are is no longer defined by the college major you graduated with.  Not only are people of my generation projected to change career fields, not just employers, many times over compared to past generations, but we have come of age in a time when learning is no longer a hierarchical or institutional activity.

The power to do something is in our hands and accessed any time we want online.  This means, Millenials will be identified with their issue-alignment and causes.  The personalized widgets for fundraising campaigns, challenges, and international issues now speak to who we are.  We find friends through the interconnected profile links of campaigns to save Darfur or cancer awareness.  My online actions and challenges are met by people from all backgrounds, job titles, and locations - but we are all working to protect the environment, or raise air quality standards, or stop human trafficking.

The way I expect not just my friends and family, but also my employers and politicians to identify me and communicate with me is also effected by the way I am defined by issues and not simply where I live or where I work.

—-

I know that is just the tip of the iceberg for three incredibly large areas, but I was going to burst if I didn’t get at least that much out of my head.  I would really, really love to hear what you think and keep this conversation going.  As the way individuals ‘live’ online is already drastically changing the way nonprofits do their work.

The power of peers

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on May 1, 2008
in fundraising
. 0 Comments

I wanted to take a quick moment to let all of you know about two great things from my friend Peter Deitz:

1.  Social Actions helps individuals and organizations use social media to plan, implement, and support peer-to-peer social change campaigns and aggregates peer-to-peer social change campaigns from 19 social action platforms.  You should check them out and create an account - this is a wonderful sprouting community for peer-to-peer social change!

2.  Peter has an excellent post that provides and introduction to fundraising with social media.  It covers Causes, Change.org, ChipIn, and Fundraising and you can read it here.

There are so many new ways to connect with others online around common goals, changes, fundraising, and more.  Have you joined a pledge online or started one yourself?  What lessons did you learn that you want to share?

Online fundraising’s little tricks

Published
by
Amy Sample Ward
on April 25, 2008
in fundraising and reports
. 2 Comments

As I started discussing yesterday, M+R and NTEN released the2008 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study and there is quite a bit of data to get through.  Today, I want to share some of my thoughts about the fundraising benchmarks highlighted in the report and one of the case studies discussed in the report’s launch presentation.

Fundraising Response Rates
It was mentioned in the previous post as well that messaging response rates, including those of fundraising messages, were down last year compared to 2006.  There is a bit of trickiness to that data though:  even though the response rates declined, the overall amount raised online continues to go up partly because of the fact that the average email list has grown by a factor that is larger than the decline in response rates.

The declining open rates still convince me to look for ways to integrate calls into one message so that you have actions/advocacy, fundraising opportunities, and news/information in every email so it isn’t a one shot or nothing deal.

Online Giving
On average, organizations raised 40% of the online giving in Q4 (October-December).  This trend is true as well for gift size.  The study found that gift size dramatically increased at the end of the year (same was true in 2006).  So, the obvious lesson here is to cultivate as many donations as possible at the end of the year.

It seems to me, though, that just as much as you should cultivate donors/donations at year-end, you should find new ways of engaging them in your fundraising needs in other times of the year.  Remember that tying fundraising appeals to current events and other communication campaigns as another option for support (it’s really just another call to action) can bring in new donors and help you identify what issues the supporters care most about.

Case Studies
#1.  Humane Society of the United States

One of the profiles included in the study focuses on the HSUS’ fundraising success.  There are a few things they did to improve their fundraising response rates, one of them was that:

They recruited new advocates on high profile advocacy campaigns, and then converted the new advocates to donors by sending fundraising appeals on the same issue.  This strategy has proved so successful for HSUS that the organization has decided to customize its rolling welcome appeal for new advocates so that new advocates hear from HSUS on the same issue they joined the email list on.  HSUS has extended this segmentation strategy to other appeals, too, by targeting list members with appeals based on those advocates’ and donors’ past online actions.

I think it is incredibly important to note that they didn’t take frequent or high impact DONORS to target in a more direct way with fundraising, but frequent and high impact ACTION-TAKERS.  Fundraising is often not very low on the ladder of engagement with new members.  It makes sense to cultivate other involvement with the organization and then approach with donation opportunities.

#2.  Amnesty International USA

During the report release conference call/webinar/live event, a representative from AI explained some interesting learning they went through with their website and online giving.  Here are some of the areas they made changes and saw results:

  • Changing the web confirmation to donation form raised $46,000+ since December and indicates which issue inspires the donor (this is a confirmation when taking action, filling out a form, etc.)
  • Changing the standard gray “submit” (or “donate” and so on) button on the donation form to a large red “submit” button, they saw a 29% lift in conversion rate.
  • Adding some right-pointing arrows to a “donate” graphic on the home page provided a 5% lift in overall traffic to the donation form and a 55% lift in total dollars raised

It is incredible to think what tiny changes can be made on your website, especially ones like these that take very little time to implement, that can drastically improve your online fundraising success.

There is one more section to the benchmarks study that I’m going to cover tomorrow (the section on Advocacy).  The fundraising section really creates just as many questions as the email data from yesterday.

Where do you find out the most information about a donor right now and how is that reflected on your website?  How are you currently designing ways to cultivate donors outside of the October-December high season?

A friend’s race - inspiration and fundraising

Published
by
amysampleward
on April 18, 2008
in fundraising
. 0 Comments

I have a good friend, Alletta, who is currently studying [and getting yet another degree] in London. We grew up together and attend the same schools until college. She has, for nearly as long as I have known her, suffered from migraines and gone through many rounds of possible causes and treatments. I want to share with you some of her story:

Last May, I ran my first marathon in Edinburgh and despite being ill most of the winter and poorly trained, managed to finish on my own two legs with a respectable time of five hours and forty-eight minutes. This year on May 11th I am giving it another go, except this time I am taking on a much more difficult race on the Isle of Wight and aim to shave more than an hour off of my time to finish in four and a half hours instead.

Running a marathon last year was a life-changing experience. Though becoming increasingly active in recent years, I never considered myself to be athletic. Suffering from asthma and frequent migraines, I have often found strenuous exercise to be very challenging. A few years ago I would have never thought it possible that I could run at all, let alone run 26.3 miles. Now I have been awakened to the possibility of pushing myself in totally new ways and deeply inspired as to what we are all capable of.

I am using my running of the Isle of Wight marathon this year as an opportunity to not only challenge myself, but as a chance to contribute something good to the world by supporting a charity that is close to my heart, the London Migraine Clinic.

The London Migraine Clinic, where I myself am a patient, is a world-class non-profit institution that seeks to help individuals suffering from migraines to find the root causes for their pain and to help them better manage these triggers. In addition, it supports important research into why migraines happen and how the millions of us who get these debilitating headaches can better take control over our health and our lives. To learn more about the Clinic’s work click here.

I think Alletta’s experience is inspirational and honorable. It has been wonderful seeing her come to take on and achieve such high goals for herself. There is no surprise to me that she has found a way to give back to the nonprofit clinic that has helped her with migraines and is helping so many others in London and around the world with their care and research.

Please support me this year in my quest to run the Isle of Wight Marathon and help the London Migraine Clinic in its work by making a donation! Just go to the following link: http://www.colmc.org.uk/ and click on the left-hand tab of “How We are Funded” then on “Donate Now.

There is no where to leave comments when you donate, so please share with me if you would like to about your support or questions so I can be sure to connect you with answers and with Alletta. Thanks, and keep up the race (be it a marathon or life, you are all so inspirational to me!)!

Link round up

Published
by
amysampleward
on April 1, 2008
in roundup
. 0 Comments

Here is a quick list of a few things on my radar, that I think should also be on yours! :)
Mapping - The Wild Apricot blog has a great post featuring three ways nonprofits are using maps.

Marketing - The Nonprofit Communications blog tells you about a five-step strategy to market your nonprofit online.

ROI - Have you checked out Care2’s Frogloop blog’s Social Network ROI calculator before? If you haven’t, you should!

Case Studies - Beth keeps a great wiki and shares case studies of nonprofits using social media.

Fundraising - Peter Deitz has picked up on a disparaging mood about peer-to-peer fundraising, what are your thoughts?