Are you treating your donors right?  The quiz.

With the Network for Good team, I just created a mini-course on thanking donors.  It’s a self-guided tour to writing great thank-yous and treating donors well all year - so they will give again!  (It’s not free, but I immodestly think this guide to stewardship is worth every penny.  Learn more here.)

So do you treat your donors well?  To figure it out, take this quiz.  (It’s free.)

And remember the rock bottom, bare minimums when it comes to donor stewardship!

1. ALWAYS THANK YOUR DONORS: Always.  No exceptions.
2. THANK THEM EARLY: You should thank your donors within a few days of their gift. 
3. THANK THEM OFTEN:  Thank your donors several times, over time, and keep reporting back on the difference they have made.
4. THANK THEM ACCURATELY: Make sure you have correctly spelled the donor’s name, stated the amount and date of the donation, included appropriate language for taxes and carefully noted if the gift was made in honor of someone else.

If I had a dollar for every charity that didn’t do these four things when I gave…

5 Things you need to know about marketing to millennials

AdAge had a very useful article last week that summarized new millennial research from ComScore, based on nearly 1,000 TV tests and 35 digital advertising tests.

The key finding? Millennials react to marketing differently.

Here were the takeaways:

1. Millennials don’t respond to TV ads as much as their elders. Younger people have always measured as less responsive to TV ads than older people, but the gap has grown with Millennials.

2. With digital, you don’t see that difference.  Millennials are about as responsive to digital ads as other generations.

3. Millennials respond to the same advertising approaches as prior generations. They care most about what makes a brand unique or better - and they react best to the product and brand shown clearly.  In other stories, they’ve also been shown to put a premium on trust.

4. Millennials are more engaged in all kinds of media than older folks. For example, millennials had engagement scores that were 22.2% higher than boomers with digital media.

5. Millennials may respond less to TV ads, but at least they remember them longer. This finding was amusing to me - as someone with a fading memory, I think that’s just the gift of the young—total recall!

So what does this mean to you?  If you’re seeking to engage younger supporters, the digital avenue is the best.  Make clear what makes your cause special.  Be authentic.  And don’t be so creative you forget the basics: clear, simple communication and a memorable messaging wins the day, whatever the generation.

Why you need someone else to be your messenger

Edelman’s 2012 Trust Barometer is out, and the biggest finding is the increasing stock people put in the recommendations of their peers - who surpass nonprofit staff in terms of their trustworthiness as messengers.

In speaking about this finding, David Armano of Edelman notes, it is important that we “share the stage with ‘regular’ people who have a voice via a variety of social channels,” as well as to be “in tune with the topics and issues they care about and discuss. Last year I speculated that the decline in attention given toward people like ourselves—our friends and peers may have been related to social media fatigue. This year, it’s possible that many of us who make social networking part of our digital routines have gotten a bit better at filtering the signal from noise, thereby being both more generous but focused with our finite attention spans.”

From my perspective, this is just one more piece of data illustrating the importance of third-party endorsement in all of your outreach and engagement.  (More evidence is here.) You can’t be your own, only messenger.  You need respected authority figures, experts and definitely, everyday champions - who are more powerful than ever.

Take two minutes and look at your latest outreach piece or your website or your organization’s Facebook page.  Who is speaking for you?  Where are they on the trust barometer?  If it’s your CEO or ED, you may need additional voices.

(Hat tip to Caryn Stein here at Network for Good for the data!)

Stuck on how to make a video?  The experts weigh in.

  • Tue, January 24 2012
  • Filed under: Video

The folks over at YouTube just sent me a free e-guide on video.  It’s called Playbook Guide: YouTube for Good, and you can access it for free here.

The Guide walks you through how to create effective videos on a shoestring - and how to use YouTube for Good to engage your community.

If you’re looking for inspiration, here is one shoestring video I really like.  It connects, tells a great story and shows where the money goes.  That’s how it’s done - and done well.

Department of inspiration: 2 causes getting their stories right!

Today, I want to share two causes that are doing a great job turning their issues into stories.  It’s so important to bring a human face to our organizations and our work.  Without stories, we are simply abstract words and ideas.  With stories, we become a part of our audience’s lives.

The first example comes from Crisis Control Ministry.  They wrote me a little while ago asking for input on their website, which they are about to revamp.  They also sent along an example of some of their new materials.  What an improvement!  They are absolutely moving in the right direction.

Old website home page:

Sample new collateral:

Here’s what I’d change about the website:

-Choose a picture and tagline that tells a story - the photo of the boy looking down and the generic language could represent any nonprofit
-Remove the mission statement and replace it with a great quote from a fan or beneficiary instead - mission statements belong on About Us pages
-Make a clear case for giving

What I like about the current site is the big Donate button, the email signup and the endorsement by Charity Navigator.  You always want a prominent way to give, a way to get in touch and a third-party endorsement.  However, the Donate button has dollars on it - bad idea.  Images of money typically prime people to be selfish.  If you use imagery, use a picture of a person being helped or other generous image.  Also, the email signup could be stronger - “sign up for updates” is not extremely compelling, though it’s better than “join our mailing list!”

I love the look and feel of the new collateral - I imagine this is a flyer - and can’t wait to see that take shape on the website.  That photo and tagline instantly engage me and inspire me to help.  Lutricia will take the new home page by storm.  So will the vastly improved tagline: Strengthening Our Community … One Neighbor at a time.

Now on to my second example - an incredibly moving take on those with special needs, via Joe Pulizzi’s Junta 42 blog.  Go HERE on the below story - you will be moved and experience the issue in an incredible way.

When your audience thinks it’s superhuman

One of the biggest barriers to getting people to take a protective action is their own sense of invulnerability.  While people may perceive a risk, they don’t think they’ll ever be a victim.  They are Superman and Wonder Woman.  Others are stupid to text and drive, but they can handle it.  Disability insurance?  Eh, probably not needed.  Bicycle helmets?  Important for everyone else!

So in a recent blog post neuromarketer Roger Dooley posed the question, what do you do to market protective measures to the many people who think they are invulnerable?

He found the answer in a hospital, where health care professionals don’t always wash their hands.  Penn psychologist Adam Grant did an experiment with two messages placed next to a hand cleaning station.  One sign read, “Hand hygiene prevents you from catching diseases,” while another said “Hand hygiene prevents patients from catching diseases.”

Guess what?  The superhuman health professionals didn’t pay much mind to the first sign - because they won’t get sick! - but they were more inclined to act when thinking of other, vulnerable people. In fact, the second sign increased the use of soap and sanitizing gel by 33%!

So for Superman and Wonder Woman, we need to point out the risks not to them, but to others, says Dooley.

How does this apply to us?  I’ll bet many of you are trying to get people to take protective measures - vaccinating a baby, stopping smoking, fastening a seatbelt, doing family planning, etc.  Instead of beating people over the head with the message that they really need to worry, try talking about how a lack of action could affect their family, friends and community members. 

I think back to a project in which I had to help inspire Baby Boomers to create a living will.  No one wants to contemplate their own demise.  So we encouraged the Boomers to talk to their family members about the importance of advance care planning - and to fill out a living will themselves in order to get their parents and other relatives to do the same.  It was far more effective than simply telling them to take the action because of their own vulnerability.

The bottom line?  Don’t try to scare a person who feels like a superhuman into a state of vulnerability.  Ask them to take an action for others.  Being superhumans, they will want to rescue the rest of us!

Why I believe the art of influence is ethical

I had an interesting comment to yesterday’s post.  Someone wondered if it was “trickery” to use defaults to influence behavior. 

That’s an excellent point to raise, especially since I intend to post a lot this year about influencing people through an understanding of how they think.  If you’re a regular on this blog, you know it’s my favorite topic.

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein have labeled this idea “Libertarian Paternalism.” As my friend Alia McKee puts it, libertarian in this context means people should be allowed to do what they like — even if it is eating junk food, using plastic grocery bags, driving Hummers or not saving a dime. Paternalism means it is legitimate to try to influence people’s behavior in order to make their lives better and guide them to choices that benefit the greater good. When combining libertarianism and paternalism, choices are never blocked off. People may continue to do as they please. However, the choices are designed to influence a particular outcome that will make the choosers better off.

Last time I checked, that’s what most of us were in the business of doing: Persuading people to do the right thing. Is that immoral?  I would argue instead that wasting precious resources by dealing with social issues ineffectively is immoral.  Those of us working for the public good have an ethical responsibility to be effective and efficient in reaching as many people as possible. If we can’t make a compelling case that prompts people to act, then we have failed to make a difference and wasted valuable time, effort, and, often, donor and taxpayer dollars. To be clear, I’m not saying we should lie, misrepresent ourselves or be inauthentic.  I’m saying we should operate out of a deep understanding of our audiences and how we can connect our cause to their hearts and minds.  We should seek to influence, not manipulate.

So let’s not shy away the art of influence.  Including yesterday’s example of using defaults and choice in effective ways.

How to get started?

As Alia McKee wrote in an eBook we co-authored with Mark Rovner:

☐ Ask yourself, “What is it I want my audience to do?”
☐ Identify potential barriers that might prevent them from doing it.
☐ Lift those barriers, not by blocking off choices, but by making it easy for your constituents to make the decision that is in their (and your) best interest.
☐ Remember, small details count. Sunstein and Thaler outline a terrific example of the devil in the behavioral details:

“In The Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, authorities have etched the image of a black housefly into each urinal. It seems that men usually do not pay much attention to where they aim, which can create a mess.  But if they see a target, attention and therefore accuracy increase. Staff conducted fly-in urinal trials and found that etchings reduced spillage by 80%.”

Sorry, I couldn’t resist the example. The concept of persuasion is not a waste.  It’s a way to prevent a waste of your resources.

How to get people to take action using defaults - and choice

If you want to persuade someone to take a certain action, a default can be a powerful tool.

For example, people are automatically signed up to receive your newsletter when they donate - unless they uncheck the opt-in box.  Or your employer starts a 401K program for you unless you request they do not.  Or your state automatically defaults your preferences to organ donation on your driver’s license unless you request not to participate in such a program.

When you choose the default for people, they typically stick with that choice.

Inside Influence adds, however, there are some important nuances to guiding people to certain decisions.

Consider this example:

Delia Cioffi and Randy Garner elegantly demonstrated this effect in a study they set up that attempted to persuade college students to volunteer for an AIDS education project to be carried out at local schools. Half the students were told that if they were willing to volunteer, they should indicate their intention by filling out a form. Others were told that if they wanted to volunteer, they should leave the form blank only filling it in if they were not willing to participate. While the percentage that agreed to volunteer was roughly equal there was marked differences in the percentage of people who actually showed up to participate several days later. Only 17% of those who agreed passively (by leaving their form blank) actually appeared as promised but 49% of those who agreed to participate through active means (by filling out their form) kept their promise.

So if you’re defaulting someone to a future commitment, you may want to have them be a little more actively involved.  As the Inside Influence team notes, “Imagine that your city council adopted a plan that required residents to respond if they didn’t want to recycle. A failure to respond could be mistakenly taken as an indication that residents intended to recycle leading to collection teams making many wasted trips.”

To take into account this nuance, researchers from the Tuck Business School at Dartmouth College together with Bari Harlam, George Loewenstein and Kevin Volpp tested an approach they refer to as an ‘Enhanced Active Choice’.

In this experiment, people were asked about flu shots in three ways:

1. One group (the opt-in group) was simply asked to:  “Check the box if you would like to receive a flu shot this fall.”

2. The second group was asked to “Check one of the following options: I will get a flu shot this fall or, I will not get a flu shot this fall.”

The second option did better (42% v 62%). 

3. The third group was asked to choose between the following two alternatives: “I will get a flu shot this fall to reduce my risk of getting the flu and I want to save $50 or, I will not get a flu shot this fall even if it means I may increase my risk of getting the flu and I will not save $50.”

That did best - with 75% of people indicating that they would get the flu shot.

Are you trying to effect behavior change?  You might want to try getting people to actively commit to an option - and give a good reason for it!

4 marketing facts for 2012

ClickZ has some excellent marketing trends to share.  The whole story is here, but if you don’t have time to read it, I offer these highlights:

1. Email is still the best way to reach most people, so focus on building your lists in 2012.

2. Consumers are “device indifferent,” meaning they are using many forms of technology.  You need to think about how to reach them wherever they are - and that means coordinated outreach across different types of technology, including mobile (phones and tablets).

3. Social media has come of age and it requires the same approach - integrated with other forms of outreach.

4. Content remains king.  If you want people to care, give them great information, stories and pictures. Outreach in any form is ineffective if it’s not engaging!

The state of social media and what it means to you

I’m a big fan of the work done by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.  Last week they released the mobile study I covered here.  Last month, Mary Madden at Pew shared some fascinating data on social media.  She agreed to my posting her deck here for your benefit.

Here are some highlights:

*The cat photo, of course
*The fact that American Internet use has leveled off at 74%
*Mobile is at an inflection point
*The most valued aspect of social media is the ability to connect to those close to us
*Facebook reigns

To me the biggest surprise was how high school buddies represent such a huge proportion of Facebook friends!

So what does all this mean to us?  Remember:

*Social media is worth using as an engagement or relationship building tool—that’s why people are there using it - but not as a self-promotion tool, ever.
*While it’s early days, you need to start thinking about mobile (I’m at work writing a white paper on it, which will come out next month, so stay tuned).

State of Social Media: 2011
View more presentations from Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project

10 Resolutions for Online Fundraising and Marketing Success in 2012

10 Resolutions for Online Fundraising and Marketing Success in 2012 is the title of a free new eBook from Network for Good.  You can get it here.

My favorite resolution is, No More Crappy Copy!

Bad writing gets in the way of good causes all the time.  Let’s put a stop to that in 2012.

Here are some tips from the eBook.

• Write to one person. Having a single person or persona in mind (e.g., 60-year-old married woman with no children) when you write an appeal helps you know what to say and how to say it. Many nonprofits write to the “general public,” and that makes their copy sound vague.

• Use active not passive voice. Forgot Rhetoric 101? That’s OK. Here’s an example of active vs. passive voice. Passive voice: “Our nonprofit is being helped by your efforts.” (Yuck!) The technical active-voice version of that would be, “Your efforts help our nonprofit.” Better, just by virtue of being written in the active voice. But better yet would be to punch it up further.

• Answer the key questions. Outlines are extremely helpful when writing. Try using the outline below and answer these four questions when building your next email appeal, PowerPoint presentation, newsletter or annual report.

• Why should I give to your cause?
• What will my gift do?
• Why should I give now?
• Who else gives, and who says I should give to you?

• Speaking of stories … tell one! Much has been written about the power of storytelling to persuade. One of the oldest forms of narrative, stories are easier to remember than isolated figures and facts. They’re also easier to tell. To learn more about how to tell better stories, see author, speaker and consultant Andy Goodman’s site.

• Edit, edit and edit some more. If you do nothing else to improve your writing, start editing your copy, and we promise it will improve. Here’s why: Writing is not a one-shot deal. It takes a lot of refining to write clear and compelling copy. Perfect your copy by rereading it at least three times before “going to print.” Cut unnecessary adjectives, and delete entire sentences!

Mobile study: Donors impulsive, social and tech-savvy

  • Thu, January 12 2012
  • Filed under: Mobile

A new study on mobile giving in response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake has loads of interesting insights for nonprofits seeking to understand mobile donors.

The research, from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Harvard’s Berkman Center for the Internet & Society, in partnership with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the mGive Foundation, shows 9% of people have texted a charitable donation from their phone.  While that may seem like a low number, it actually represents a significant percentage when you consider mobile giving only started in 2008 - and in that first year, it yielded more donations that the first year of online giving.

So who are these donors?

1. IMPULSIVE: Surveyed donors who gave in response to Haiti said it was a spur-of the-moment decision - and for most, it was their first time giving with their phone.  Three quarters of these mobile donors (73%) contributed using their phones on the same day they heard about the campaign, and a similar number (76%) say that they typically make text message donations without conducting much in-depth research beforehand.  Six in ten have not followed the ongoing reconstruction efforts closely after making their donation, and just 3% say they have followed these efforts “very closely”. Additionally, a sizable majority (80%) have not received additional follow-up communications from the organization that received their donation.

2. SOCIAL: Yet while their initial contribution often involved little deliberation, 43% of these donors encouraged their friends or family members to give to the campaign as well.  Interestingly, of those who encouraged a friend or family member to donate, three quarters (75%) did so by talking with others in person—twice the number who sent a text message encouraging others to donate (34% did this) and more than three times the number who did so by posting on a social networking site (21%).

3. TECH-SAVVY: Most of those surveyed (56%) have continued to give to more recent disaster relief efforts—such as the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan—using their mobile phones.  They were far more likely than the norm to Tweet, access the web via their phone and own an e-reader.  They also tended to be younger than typical donors.

The study underlines a wealth of recent research showing multi-channel outreach is the best approach.  Mobile should be part of an integrated outreach plan.  The mobile donors use a range of methods to give money, and when asked their favorite way, they prefer text messaging (favored by 25%) and online forms (24%) only slightly to mail (22%) and in-person donations (19%). Voice calling was the least preferred way of being contacted.

I also think the impulsive, social nature of these donors is reflective of much of individual giving.

So should you jump into mobile?  I think text-to-give campaigns are great for large-scale humanitarian disasters that have captured widespread interest and for local events, when you have an opportunity to ask people to act in the moment.  If you are hoping people will give on their phones but haven’t figured out how to create the impetus for an impulsive action, step back and solve for that challenge before anything else.  Mobile, like all technology, doesn’t work on its own.  You need a compelling appeal that reaches people at the right time.

For more on the study, go here.

One thing that will make your message unforgettable

What is that one thing?

A really good metaphor - it’s mental velcro.

Take your theory of change or your approach to social good and turn it into a metaphor - it’s ever so much more effective than the typical, intangible, conceptual way of communicating.

And it’s not only memorable—it affects how people think about you and your issue.

According to writer David DeSalvo, research shows that when metaphors are used to frame a discussion, the rest of the discussion will be viewed through the lens of the metaphor.

In a fascinating study from Stanford that DeSalvo discusses in his book, “What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite,” studies were asked to read reports about crime.  One report talked about crime as a “wild beast preying on the city and lurking in neighborhoods.”  Students who read that study favored solutions like building jails or calling in the military.  In a different report, crime was described as a “virus infecting the city and plaguing communities.”  Students who read that study opted for law enforcement in fewer numbers and were more inclined to suggest social reforms. 

So metaphor not only sticks in the mind - it shapes opinion. 

Mind your metaphors - they are powerful stuff.

Your audience is an audience of audiences with audiences

This statement comes from Brian Solis in his new book, The End of Business as Usual.  He shows this wonderful photo from a Missouri School of Journalism class a few years back:

It’s a great visualization of our changing marketing universe.  With social media, we’re not in an egosystem, we’re in an ecosystem with multiple layers of interaction and influence.

It’s no longer a model of - we speak and people listen.  When we speak, an interesting process starts - if we’re interesting enough.

1. We speak
2 The People Formerly Known as the Audience or PFKATA (Jay Rosen’s term) turn what we say into a social object
3.In that process, PFKATA earns an audience of its own, leading to another shared experience
4.And so on.

The amount of sharing grows every year, and connections around that sharing grow and shrink based on the needs of the network members.

Solis rightly notes that therefore, before we speak via social media, we should think about this world and ask ourselves:

1. Why would anyone want to listen to us on any social network?
2. How can we deliver value, experience or content worth sharing?
3. Why should people want to stay connected to us over time?  Why should they come back?
4 Why should they choose to ask others to share our content?
5. Why would they invest their time and express loyalty in their networks?

We need good answers to these questions to truly turn social media into a conversation for good.  When you think about your audience as an audience of audiences with audiences, not only does your mind spin, but you begin to understand that simply speaking is not enough.  And it becomes evident why your Facebook page might be a ghost town. 

In this world of audiences within audiences, you won’t get past the first group - TPFKATA - unless you are connecting based on something truly worth sharing. 

Marketing metrics: Are yours vain or accountable?

Ah marketing.  We love to do it, but we shy away from really measuring it. 

Here is a superb infographic from Marketo via Beth Kanter that says it all.  Namely:

-We don’t measure our impact well
-When we do, we often fall into self-promotion and vanity metrics
-The right metrics are those that truly make a difference: lead generation, conversion and revenue per customer (to translate those to the nonprofit world: don’t measure how many PSAs you launched—measure new prospects, donations, lifetime value of a donor)

When you measure your performance against the right things, you are truly accountable as a nonprofit marketing professional.  And that’s how we should all strive to be.

View the infographic in larger dimensions here.

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