Welcome to my personal blog on Robin Hood Marketing—the concept of stealing corporate savvy to sell just causes—and my life as a marketer, from Washington DC to Madagascar to points in between.
The 500th Post: 16 Nonprofit Marketing (and Life) Lessons from You
Posted by katya on Tue, June 30, 2009
This, dear readers, is my 500th post here on Katya’s Nonprofit Marketing Blog. I wanted to make it extra special and wise, so I decided I’d better not be the one writing it. A couple of weeks ago here and on Twitter, I asked you to contribute to this post with the one piece of wisdom that you wish you’d known at the start of your nonprofit marketing and fundraising efforts - or the lesson you keep finding yourself forgetting. Here are 16 gems from you - each of which I’ve named in honor of the contributor. If some of these sound like common sense, good. That’s the funny thing about common sense - it’s rather uncommon in this world. Thanks for sharing everyone - and for reminding me of some things that are far too easy to forget amidst the daily grind.
Nancy’s rule: Reflect first.
Think before you act! It’ll save you endless frustration, time and money… and ensure you’re doing the most with the marketing & fundraising resources you have. Nancy Schwartz
Joel’s rule: But don’t reflect too long. It’s never going to be perfect anyway.
You can’t get good without practice. If you stay behind your desk, waiting to “get good” before going out to tell your story, you’ll never “get good.” You MUST go out and present people with the chance to get involved with your cause, way before you’re comfortable doing so, and certainly before you’re “good” at it. Joel Preston
Thomas’s rule: Pay attention to what you do right - and wrong.
My input for your 500th post is my personal philosophy about life in general and fundraising in particular: “Do what works.” If you don’t know what works, research what has worked (and not worked) for others. Once you start trying things, pay attention to what brings positive results and what brings negative results. Hang onto the things that bring positive results and let go the ones that bring negative results. Finally, remember that everything changes, so what worked today may not work tomorrow. You must always keep your eye on the ball. Thomas Robinson
Tony’s law of targeting
It’s not about being everything to everyone; It’s about crafting a clear, concise, and radically different organization that means much to a select few. Tony Pantello
Tamsen’s rule of originality
Know what and who you are, and be the best of that you can be. So many non-profits spend all their time trying to be some other non-profit. But why be a copycat? Copies always lose resolution. Tamsen McMahon
Laws of the Audience by Amy, Taryn and Zan
My piece of wisdom is that in direct mail fundraising, you, the mailer, are not the audience. Amy Tripi
Know your audience and adapt your message to them to maximize effect. Taryn Baranowski
Audience, audience, audience. Always think about what they care about, are dealing with, are motivated by. You (communications pro) might be part of that audience, but you must always be thinking outside of yourself. Start every email, every newsletter article or blog post, with an a specific person in mind that you are trying to reach. Zan McColloch-Lussier
Jeremy’s rule of relationships
Don’t just market and fundraise to people, connect with their passions and forge relationships—a donation to your cause is nice, but a supporter of your cause is better. Jeremy Sony
Elizabeth on Storytelling
Tell a good story. I can’t emphasize enough to my nonprofit clients how important it is to tell stories about their work instead of talk about themselves. Here are some ideas on what makes a good story. Elizabeth Turnbull
Niels’ Advice: Think like a 14 year old.
I learned this when I was fourteen and then I forgot again. Don’t ask me why. Go door to door, explain why you are knocking on their door and ask for their help. I you believe in your cause, you will find many other who do too. What advantage does a fourteen year old have? When you say you believe in something, people tend to believe you. So, what do you need to do to make people believe you? I don’t think it is about the clever packaging, but about the passion of your conviction. Niels Teunis
Sergio: Be passionate.
Giving is not only talking about money. Giving is also doing something with your heart. Sergio Felter
Amy’s Rule of constructive dispassion
A nonprofit organization is still a business. Don’t ignore those business “tru-isms” because you think they don’t apply to a charity. One of my professors once said that most nonprofits fail because its run by someone who has great passion for the cause…but little business sense. If you’ve got passion - that’s the hard part, just bring some business skills into it and you’ve got the major pieces for success! Amy Shropshire
Clover: Forever young (or dead)
Reach out to young people (for volunteers, board members, staff, etc.) or you will surely die as your supporters do. Clover Frederick
Karen’s Rule: Don’t try to do it all.
Twitter, Facebook, blogging, newsletters, e-mail blasts, brochures, press releases, internal communication, etc. You can’t do it all. Figure out what you must do and what you can do well that will set you apart, master those, and stay focused. Karen Washbush
Barb’s Last Word: Take the long view.
It takes time. I keep forgetting that. Barb McMahon
What are the metrics of success for your online community?
Posted by katya on Fri, June 26, 2009
I get asked this question a lot. What is the ROI of social media? So I asked some experts. This question will be answered today in a guest post from Bob Cramer, CEO of ThePort Network, a social media solutions provider and great resource for nonprofits..
By Bob Cramer
In rolling out an online social networking community, your nonprofit’s objectives should be all about your organization’s constituents. Certainly, fundraising campaigns and dollars raised are the bottom line, but as part of that, building engagement and passion among supporters is crucial.
However, actually measuring success around such themes can be difficult. To this end, physicist and mathematician Albert Einstein aptly noted, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
By taking into account both qualitative and quantitative measures, it is possible to get a more comprehensive and accurate look at the real impact your social community is having.
Measuring Qualitative Success by the Relationships You Have With Members
It’s easy to overlook qualitative measures for social networking success, because they are intrinsically abstract as compared to “hard” quantitative measures such as membership growth or increases in the number of page views. From a traditional business perspective, it’s like trying to measure customer loyalty and brand perception – such elements are vital, but measuring them can be infinitely harder than simply looking at quarter-to-quarter sales comparisons.
But skipping qualitative indicators would be a big mistake, since they reveal success in strengthening the ties between you and your advocates, as well as reinforcing the bonds between community members themselves. Remember that such qualities set the stage for healthy fundraising in the long-term.
Here are some examples of qualitative success measures in a nonprofit social community:
• You are building better relationships with constituents by learning more about them to fine-tune your nonprofit’s focus and programs.
• Messages delivered to the community are being shared member-to-member and with the outside world.
• Your blog posts are building momentum in the number of quality comments that give insight into supporters’ opinions.
• Members are using the community to actively trade knowledge and insights and are meaningfully supporting fellow constituents’ concerns, passions and goals.
Such indicators reveal how well you are communicating to your members, and how well they are communicating back to you – and with each other. Again, all this points back to more engaged and passionate supporters, something essential to meeting fundraising goals.
Selecting Metrics to Track Quantitative Trends
Similarly, from a quantitative nature, what social networking metrics should nonprofits generate to validate community success? Some basics might include:
• Increases in the number of people joining the community.
• Increases in page views on your website, and in the average duration of site visits.
• Conversion rates of member to member-donor.
• Number of days from community registration to first donation.
• Increases in donation averages, or in members who donate multiple times.
Analytics tools are available to help you track and analyze many important quantitative trends. Such indicators assign hard numbers to validate community success, which are important for justifying budgetary expenditures.
Social networking ROI measures are still evolving, but as you can see there are methods that you can use now to determine your social community’s progress and success.
(Folks who are keeping score at home - this is by 497th blog post! My 500th blog post will be written by you, my readers. It’s not too late to share your wisdom for the big 500.)
Your nonprofit or foundation could be one of this year’s Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Award winners! Enter today here.
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 basic, and 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.
All entrants will receive a free copy of the fully-updated 2009 Nonprofit Tagline Report in late 2009. It’s the complete guide to building your org’s brand in 8 words or less—filled with how-tos, don’t-dos and models.
Enter today, while it’s on your mind. Deadline is July 31st.
Check out the winners of the 2008 Nonprofit Tagline Awards (selected by nearly 4,000 voters in the field). This could be your org in 2009!
This is one of the most common questions I get asked: How do I build by email list? Here are 14 ways courtesy of Kivi Leroux Miller, queen of email knowledge, and Network for Good. Nonprofits marketing friends, this is a must-read!
If you want more, please join our free training with Kivi this week. Register here for:
7 Steps to Better Email Fundraising & Communications
Do you want to grow/build your email list? Do you know if anyone is reading your emails? Does your email outreach need a design or copywriting upgrade?
Free Teleconference
Special Day & Time:
Thursday, June 25 at 4 p.m. (eastern)
Secrets to social media campaigns: New Case Foundation report
Posted by katya on Tue, June 23, 2009
A little over a year ago, the Case Foundation, together with partners Network for Good, Causes on Facebook and Global Giving, and corporate partner Parade Magazine, encouraged thousands of individuals to compete online for donors, donations, and matching awards for their favorite charitable causes as part of the Foundation’s first-ever Giving Challenge. Nearly $2 million was raised for charities. It was one of the earliest and largest experiments encouraging everyday people to become champions of their causes - and fundraisers - using social networks.
Now the Foundation, together with two venerable social media gurus Allison Fine and Beth Kanter, have put out a report summarizing what they learned. You can read the full report here.
The key findings are actually no secret at all. But we tend to forget their truth, which is why we need to mind them closely. Allison Fine summed up the findings on her blog yesterday, and I liked what one of the commenters said: that the main findings are what’s been true for at least 200 years, long before computers. Namely, says commenter Kristina Carlson, “People give to people they know and trust; and a sense of urgency is critical to success.” Allison agreed, and I do too. Technology does not change the basic truth that we give for emotional reasons in a moment of generous impulse. It just makes this phenomenon happen more easily, faster, and on a larger scale. It also allows individual people or very small organizations to be catalysts for broader giving. Most of the top fundraisers were not from large organizations. One person can do much by reaching out to their inner circle, which then connects to a greater community. Take it from two participants:
“We had 40 volunteers who did the work of 4,000 volunteers. They emailed their address book of friends. They asked their friends to ask their friends to donate. It is fascinating. The last day of the contest you’ve never seen 40 people more on edge. We were shocked by the numbers. By the end of the day, we got 700 donations in one day. Took years off our lives!” – Linda Shiller and Mary Parente, 11th Hour Rescue
Here are the main findings:
*Four key elements contributed to the success of the 2007-2008 Giving Challenge: its competitive structure, the limited timeframe, the leaderboard allowing participants to track their progress, and the incentive to receive additional award funds.
*Personal connections were critical in activating the viral effect of successful cause efforts - by large margins (between 61-74%), cause champions reported reaching out for donations and outreach assistance to people they knew personally, including known supporters, family, friends and colleagues first to spread the word and encourage participation in the Challenge.
*Smaller organizations & all-volunteer efforts experienced significant success - 11 of the 16 Giving Challenge award recipients interviewed were for causes with annual organizational budgets of less than $1M
*Individuals and nonprofits learned how to use new tools and technologies to encourage participation and give new significance to small donors - while some participants were more comfortable with using social networking and other tools such as microblogging, other more novice users turned to their networks for advice and technical support, and immersed themselves in learning how to use these tools.
To succeed online, you need to remember all of these things: keep the focus on the audience (not the tools), because people are what make things go viral. A deadline never hurt, either!
Thanks to the Case Foundation, Allison and Beth for your findings.
I’m getting ready to move house today and tomorrow. I’ve been feeling a little stressed about it all. Then I got an email from Mark Horvath, a formerly homeless person who now chronicles the lives of the homeless. And I got perspective (I’m lucky to have a home). And I got inspired.
A few words, a few pictures, a transformative experience. All we need now is a call to action. One would be to hire Mark, who is funding his efforts out of his own pocket while unemployed! Follow him on Twitter!
Just yesterday, I was lamenting a lame piece on homelessness on the radio. That what the “what not to do.” Today, we get the “how-to.”
I always like to call a good story three-way communication. Old nonprofit marketing is one-way - we talk at people. New nonprofit marketing is two-way - it is a conversation. Stories are three-way - they include the story teller and the audience both in the experience and transport them both to a third place, a shared experience, together.
I know I’ve been working too much when I can’t take off my nonprofit marketing and fundraising hats.
But I can’t, so I thought I’d reflect on two blown opportunities I recently noticed.
One was a long commentary on the need to support the homeless, which aired on my local NPR affiliate. It took a compelling topic and wrung out all the humanity. Not a single person or story made a cameo. Just mind-numbing stats and policy jargon. Tragic.
The second was my daughter’s school cafeteria. They sent home a memo asking how to refund unused money in her account. I wanted to donate it to kids who forget their lunch or to support the cafeteria, but that was not an option they gave.
Make it irresistable and easy to give. One amazing story on NPR or one checkbox on the school lunch form could have prompted an act of charity. Instead, they were lost opportunities.
I spend so much time saying things like this - common sense, plain and simple. But I’m afraid I’ll keep saying them, because somehow we forget the fundamentals all too often. Look at your existing marketing and materials, and make sure you aren’t missing the obvious. You don’t necessarily need something new and shiny. You may simply need something old and proven.
Are your nonprofit’s stories winners or snoozers? Learn here.
Posted by katya on Tue, June 09, 2009
Mike Grenville, Flickr:
Today Mark Rovner of SeaChange did a great talk on storytelling for Network for Good. This is an important topic, because we all have amazing stories—but we don’t always tell them. Or tell them well. Why? Mark says nonprofits want to seem smart and on top of things, so we load our stories with facts and data. But too much kills the heart of a story: emotion.
In other words, too many facts and too much data in your stories are the equivalent of emotional Novocain, says Mark.
So what belongs in a story? Character, desire and conflict.
The character is the protagonist. Who is the main character? It needs to be a person, not your organization. A good protagonist is human, attractive, funny, good-hearted and up against a serious challenge.
Desire is what the character wants and pursues.
Conflict is the active opposition to the protagonist achieving his/her goals. Conflict is very important: You need high stakes, long odds and maybe even a villain.
Here’s how it works together: You introduce a character, then an inciting event that changes the protagonist’s life. (Disney usually kills off a parent!) Then the character faces obstacles and conflicts to getting to a goal. This is the real meat of the story, when your character is struggling to get a law passed, a visa for a refuge, emergency surgery for an animal. It’s not clear if the character will prevail. Then the character prevails or fails. There is a moral and call to action at the end.
Mark says not every story needs to have a perfect ending. And definitely don’t make your characters perfect. It’s more interesting if they are real.
Here are some things to AVOID:
1. Fear of emotion
2. Bad casting (like making your hero an organization rather than a real person we care about)
3. Too wide a focus (individual people are better than many)
4. Numbers and data
5. Only happy endings
6. No moral
At Network for Good, we’re troubled by the high volume of bad email in our sector. Just the other day, we were dismayed to get an email newsletter sent via bcc on Outlook as a PDF attachment. A triple bad! So we wanted to do something about it. With Kivi Leroux Miller, we put together an eBook on good email. And made it free. To you. Because you have a great mission, and so you need great email.
Step 1: Get a Good Email Service Provider
Step 2: Get Your Mailing List into Shape
Step 3: Figure Out What Your Readers Want
Step 4: Compose Email Works of Beauty
Step 5: Make Your Microcontent Even Better
Step 6: Design Your Email Messages
Step 7: Track Your Results and Improve Your Program
Thanks Kivi for your brilliance. Nonprofit marketing friends, enjoy!
Are we there yet? How to evaluate your comms efforts
Posted by katya on Thu, June 04, 2009
There’s a great Communications Network study available now that answers the elusive question, “how can we tell if our efforts are working?!”
Highly recommended reading.
Why bother? The study explains why you’d better evaluate your messaging efforts:
*Evaluation improves the effectiveness of your communications
*Evaluation can help you effectively engage with your audience
*Situations change – strategies and tactics may need to change as well
*Evaluation helps you allocate resources wisely
That last reason is especially timely right now.
It takes you through simple steps to evaluate how you’re doing:
Step 1: Determine What You Will Evaluate
Step 2: Define Your Goal
Step 3: State Your Objective
Step 4: Identify Your Audience
Step 5: Establish Your Baseline
Step 6: Pose Your Evaluation Questions
Step 7: Draft Your Measurements
Step 8: Select Your Evaluation Techniques
Step 9: Estimate Your Budget
Thanks to the Communications Network for making this available right now. We all need to focus on what works when resources are tight.
Tell me something smart: Please help me with my 500th post
Posted by katya on Tue, June 02, 2009
I’ve been at this blogging thing a while… so long, in fact, that I’m closing in on my 500th post! That’s only a number that matters to me, sadly, so let’s talk about what matters to YOU. For my 500th poast, which should occur within the next month unless I really go slack, I want to post 500 words that reflect your wisdom. Because after 500 posts, I certainly welcome new ideas.
Please, dear readers, send me one sentence that says what you wish you’d known sooner about nonprofit outreach/marketing/fundraising. What gems can you offer the folks struggling out there? If you could give a new hire one piece of advice, what would it be? If you wish you didn’t keep forgetting some basic truth, what is it?
I’m going to turn these gems into a post of 500 words.
IssueLab recently told me this was possible. I said, “really? Prove it with a guest post.” And here’s what they have to say:
Does your organization have a stale list of publications on your web site or a shelf full of research you produced years ago? Are you looking for a way to hook into a hot news topic or online discussion but you don’t have the resources to produce new research?
Nonprofits often think their older work isn’t newsworthy anymore – but we know from IssueLab’s user behavior that people are looking for research on relevant topics, no matter how old it is. In the same way that lessons from very local issues can be applied regionally or nationally, or extrapolated data can provide important indicators for a bigger picture, older research can and does inform and support current debates.
Research reports provide ‘milestones’ that can serve as benchmarks, historical records, examples of successes and failures, a resource for further information (through citations and references), a method for identifying gaps in the sector, and as indicators of change over time. How would we know whether policy shaped action, or action led to policy change - without older research?
The point is, research can always be relevant for someone, somewhere. Nonprofits shouldn’t shy away from archival work just because of its publication date. Constituents are looking for your work! As an example, in IssueLab, the three most requested reports published before 1990 were viewed almost 600 times in 2009 alone. That’s almost 20 years after they were first published!
We think it’s vital that the collective body of research remains large enough to reflect the importance of an issue at any given time. So, dust off that report, digitize it if necessary, and start sharing it as a “backgrounder” on your web site, in the comments section of blogs where there is debate and conversation about an issue related to your work, twitter it as a “resource”, add it to IssueLab’s forum for nonprofit research, or even include it in your next e-newsletter as a testament to how far your issue has come or evidence of the fact that things haven’t changed enough!
To add your research to IssueLab, create a free account today and list as much research as you’d like - just go here - we take care of the rest.
I recently had the folks behind the oldie but goodie, The Raising of Money (circa 1983, since updated) reach out with a nice offer for you - a free electronic copy of their first edition here.
It’s been around awhile, but like all good wisdom it still holds up.
Here’s a promo of the book from their marketing folks:
Every seasoned fundraising professional knows two things: First, face-to-face cultivation of personal relationships is the proven path to attracting large investments—the gifts that can be game-changers for your organization. Second, board members and other volunteers are the best messengers, especially once they’ve made their own investments in the cause.
They also know that tying those two threads together can seem a daunting challenge. Even the most dedicated volunteers often shy away from direct involvement in raising money.
So for decades, fundraising pros have relied on a “little blue book” to inspire and inform their boards: The Raising of Money, 35 Essentials Every Trustee Should Know, by Jim Lord.
In just 108 brief pages, this “executive summary” gives board members the fundamentals of raising money. And the lessons it contains are every bit as relevant today as when it was first published in 1983:
* Work from the perspective of the marketplace, instead of the organization’s internally defined agenda and “needs.”
* Focus on providing satisfaction and fulfillment for the donor, rather than “selling” them what the organization has to offer.
* Authentically involve people in the life of the organization. (The best way to attract top-notch volunteers and donors, especially now.)
And most important of all: Kindle the spirit of philanthropy.
“Our mission is to provide people with opportunities to do great things ... to challenge and inspire them ... to involve them in enterprises that will make life better for our generation, and future generations. If we can succeed in this, we won’t have to be too concerned about raising money. “
Again, the first edition of The Raising of Money is available to you, dear blog reader, as a free download at http://www.theraisingofmoney.com.
Cervix, seals and celebs: Proof Nonprofits Can Be Funny
Posted by katya on Tue, May 26, 2009
I’m delighted today to have a guest post from Margaux O’Malley. Take it away, Margaux—we are dying to see actual humor here.
Margaux O’Malley is the president and co-founder of Grand Junction Design, a Washington DC-area studio that works with nonprofits to create social change through effective websites.
Those of us who are working for social change run into a lot of sensitive and challenging issues. Sometimes it helps to lighten things up a bit. Even when you’re dealing with sensitive subjects, a little humor can go a long way toward:
getting people’s attention,
helping people get more comfortable with the subject, and
creating a viral effect that helps spread the word for you.
Here are some examples I’ve seen of humor in nonprofit communications.
E-Postcard: Cervical Cancer Prevention for Mother’s Day
This year for Mother’s Day, the Pearl of Wisdom Campaign to Prevent Cervical Cancer created some pretty e-postcards that could be sent to mothers everywhere, encouraging them to get tested for HPV, the virus that causes cervical cancer. The most popular postcard was the funny one—kudos to Barbara Baracks for the clever idea!
Contest: LOLSeals The Humane Society of the US sponsored a contest called LOLSeals where people could add captions to cute photos of seals, in the LOLcat style. Wild Apricot Blog summed it up well:
LOLseals begins with eye-catching photos of baby seals posted on the Humane Society’s website. Viewers are invited to add their own amusing LOLspeak captions - and it’s all done through a web-based image macro application that means tech skills are no barrier to anyone joining in.
With a click of a button, too, Facebook members can share with friends on social network without leaving the HSUS site. Submissions are posted to the Humane Society’s Flickr page, and celebrity judge Nigel Barker of the popular television show, America’s Next Top Model, will choose the winning entry. The winner will receive “a prize pack filled with Protect Seals gear,” and all of the entries will be displayed in a slideshow on the website at the close of the contest.
By combining a light-hearted bit of creative fun with celebrity shine, and by making it easy for each website visitor to take part and spread the word in various ways, the Humane Society is converting a passive viewer to an active advocate for their cause.
Celebrity Videos for Human Rights
Here are two examples of nonprofits using celebrity endorsement combined with a bit of humor.
Joss Whedon’s speech for Equality Now
Joss Whedon is a great screenwriter who is known for creating strong female characters. Almost every time he’s interviewed, he’s asked about this.
He’s also a long-time supporter of Equality Now, which works to end violence and discrimination against women and girls around the world.
So when he gave a speech for Equality Now in the summer of 2006, he tied these two ideas together. Joss is just a funny guy in general, so he kept it light-hearted; but still, when he finally delivered his point at the end, it packed a serious punch.
DarfurFast event organized by STAND, the student-led divison of Genocide Intervention Network.
To promote STAND’s DarfurFast event, Emmy-Award winning actor Bradley Whitford and Melissa Fitzerald (of TV show The West Wing) agreed to record a quick announcement. When the actors stumbled over the script during filming, STAND used their blooper footage to create an ad that begins with a humorous introduction, but ultimately arrives at a serious message.
In conclusion: don’t be afraid to be funny! Remember that humor is just a tool to engage the audience. Once they’re engaged, you can transition to the sensitive subject. The humor is not about the actual subject - nobody is joking about cancer or genocide - it’s just a way to help approach something to which people might otherwise be resistant.
Posted by katya on Tue, June 30, 2009
(5) 
Margaux O’Malley is the president and co-founder of 
The Humane Society of the US sponsored a contest called 
Syndicate
