Top Five Nonprofit Website Mistakes
- Fri, July 20 2007
- Filed under: Social Media
Here are the five deadly sins we commit:
1. TOO EGOTISTICAL: The home page is too often simply an About Us page. It should not be an electronic brochure with your mission statement. It should speak to the user’s values, interests and desires. It’s not “about us,” it’s “about them.”
2. TOO MEEK: There is often no clear call to action on nonprofit pages. Grab a friend or relative, sit them down in front of your website home page, and count how many seconds it takes them to find and click on your Donate button or find another way to do something. If it takes them more than two seconds, you need to place your button in a far more prominent position. Make it central to the page. Make sure it is above the fold. Make it big. Make it colorful. Make it impossible to miss.
2. TOO LAID-BACK: Too often, there’s no reason to act no – as opposed to later, or never. You want to inspire someone to act right now, but that can be hard to do if there’s not an urgent crisis to address. Create a sense of urgency for donating by creating a campaign with a goal and deadline, matching grant, or appeal for specific items or programs that are highly tangible.
4. TOO DODGY: People want to know where their resources will go if you support them. You must inspire trust. Where will the money go? What impact will result? What lives will be saved, what credible goal will be achieved?
5. TOO SHORT-SIGHTED: You need a lead generator. Recognize that getting clicks requires cultivation. While you want someone to take action right away, it’s important to remember that it takes time to cultivate people. Be sure your website includes a way to capture the email addresses of visitors so that you can build a relationship with visitors and turn them into donors in the future. A newsletter is not very exciting; give people a more compelling reason to surrender their email addresses.
Comment: (13)
Fake Food for Thought
- Fri, July 20 2007
- Filed under: Marketing essentials
Have you heard about what the Whole Foods CEO did?
Apparently, Mackey has spent years commenting on blogs about the merits of Whole Foods and trashing the competition, pretending to be a Whole Foods fan (rather than its CEO). Good grief - this is from the company that is supposed to be “all natural?” (A point CK made.)
As I posted in a comment at Church of the Customer, Mackey’s behavior reminds me of topic of the week here in Washington - the increased scrutiny that politicians who talk family values deservedly invite when they hire hookers. It’s bad enough to be a fake voice online—it’s even worse when you project an absolutely antithetical position publicly. Authenticity sure seems in short supply these days. Just ask Mark Rovner, he’ll agree with me.
It also reminds me of the fact this week that Verizon sent me a very expensive direct mail piece ressembling a wedding invitation. The fancy card told me I am a VIP customer. Meanwhile, my nearly new Treo died last week, and Verizon flubbled the replacement shipment
FIVE PHONE CALLS BY ME. Can you tell I’m irritated? Verizon is clearly on a big customer service push, but no matter how friendly the customer service representatives are or how esteemed I am as VIP customer, if the company doesn’t actually deliver good service, it’s as fake as Mackey. I pointed this out in a friendly way to the Verizon rep today and he gave me a sizable discount off my July phone bill, to his credit. And he said he was sorry, nicely. I felt slightly more VIP, and a little better about their authenticity. I feel far less forgiving of Mackey. (Update - I’m less forgiving of Verizon a day later, because my phone still did not show up. Let’s see if they are monitoring the web and see that I’m truly irate.)
People are sick of BS, and they are highly unforgiving when they step in your BS.
Seth Godin says all marketers are liars. What would he say about all of this? This is his take on what’s selling and what’s lying:
Every marketer tells a story. And, if they do it right, we believe them. We believe that wine tastes better in a $20 glass than a $1 glass. We believe that an $80,000 Porsche Cayenne is cooler than a $36,000 VW Touareg, which is virtually the same car. We believe that $225 Pumas will make our feet feel better than $20 no-names… and believing it makes it true. Successful marketers don’t tell the truth… They tell a story. A story we want to believe… Every organization—from nonprofits to car companies, from political campaigns to wine glass blowers—must understand that the rules have changed again. In an economy where the richest have an infinite number of choices (and no time to make them), every organization is a marketer and all marketing is about telling stories. Marketers succeed when they tell us a story that fits our worldview, a story that we intuitively embrace and the share with our friends. Think of the Dyson vacuum cleaner and the iPod. Marketers fail when they are selfish and scurrilous, when they abuse the tools of their trade and make the world worse. Think of telemarketers and Marlboro.
What do you think? I think it’s never okay to lie. It is okay to connect with an audience based on their values, as long as you are making bold promises to them and not false ones. The wine glass can’t have a crack in it, the Cayenne had better go fast ,and the Pumas had better look stylish. The Whole Foods CEO had better walk his talk of corporate responsibility. And a company that tells me I’m a VIP should try it’s damnest to treat me like one. Tell a story, but make it true.
Comment: (5)
Get $10,000 for your nonprofit - and a t-shirt
- Thu, July 19 2007
- Filed under: Social Media
Today at Network for Good, we’re relaunching Six Degrees with sponsorship from Hanes. We hope the site (which we’re putting the final touches on this morning) is easier to use - and there are some good reasons to use it. Hanes is supporting people including you) who create badges by awarding up to $10,000 to the causes of the six people most successful at connecting with friends and family to raise funds for their favorite charities. In addition, anyone who gets six people to donate to their badge will receive an official Six Degrees t-shirt from Hanes.
Get your supporters to create a badge - or build your own. It’s a great way to experiment with web 2.0, widgets and friend-to-friend fundraising. In our first six months, we’ve seen $700,000 donated through the badges, which suggests there are a group of people very willing to donate in this way. I’ll be talking more about Six Degrees this morning here in New York, where I’m speaking at the Money for Mission conference.
ALL THE DETAILS:
Six Degrees, a site created by Kevin Bacon in partnership with Network for Good, is a way to engage your supporters in fundraising for you with their own friends and family online with charity badges, which are fundraising widgets. This approach of person-to-person fundraising is often called “viral fundraising,” and it’s a new way your most loyal donors can help you. Because Six Degrees gives you a tool to fundraise anywhere online, it’s a great approach to getting bloggers involved in your cause and for tappinginto your supporters to integrate into social networks like MySpace. Consider it a creative, easy, and low-cost supplement to the fundraising you already do via your website and email.
Your charity can create a badge for your supporters - or you can ask your supporters to create their own. Here’s how it works:
-You go to SixDegrees.org and click on “create a badge”
-Create a badge for your charity by uploading photo and text and generating a Donate button for your organization - this takes about 5-10 minutes
-We give you the code to display the badge on your website and share it with your supporters
-The badge tracks in real time the number and amount of donations
-You can create as many badges as you want, and you can invite your supporters to create their own badges if they’d rather design their own, instead of using yours
-Any badge created at Six Degrees during our matching grants campaign is eligible for the matching grants
-There’s no charge for creating badges. The only fees invovled with the program are the Network for Good transaction processing fees, which are 4.75% of transactions. We give donors the choice of covering that fee for the charity or deducting it from the donation
-You can log in to your Network for Good Donation Tracking Report at any time to obtain information on the donors that have supported you through the badges
Comment: (1)
You can’t fake authenticity
- Wed, July 18 2007
- Filed under: Marketing essentials
My esteemed colleague Mark Rovner has a great blog carnival this week on authenticity. In this era of withering scepticism about all things marketing, we’re best off being honest and flawed rather than slick and slimy.
Check it out, it’s worth the read. You can discover some new blogs in the process.
I think when you’re unsure of what to do, especially when it comes to talking to your audience, authenticity can help you out of the dark.
Wondering how often you should contact your supporters and by what means? Tell them you’re unsure, and ask them what they want. They’ll love it - no one else bothers.
Concerned that your story isn’t perfect? All the better, it’s human.
Worried people aren’t opening your mail or electronic newsletters? Label the next one, “did we bore you last time?” and ask your supporters what interests them.
Candor, directness and truth cut through the clutter.
Comment: (1)
10 things to engage constituents online
- Thu, July 12 2007
- Filed under: Websites and web usability
At yesterday’s AMA Foundation Conference, I had an excellent time presenting with three very smart people on the above topic. They were Jonathon D. Colman of The Nature Conservancy, Jacob Colie of Mercy Corps and Arlin Wasserman of America on the Move. Here were the 10 things we said were vital:
1. Do cross channel promotion (Jacob). In the mail, email your donors before they receive postal mail appeals. On the phone, give your donors the option to give online. Send email to your best offline donors. Make the pieces work together.
2. Make marketing a conversation (Katya). Make sure all your online outreach and presences enable two-way conversation with your supporters, fans and non-fans.
3. Be accessible, easy, encouraging and intimate (Arlin). Check out how well America on the Move does this on their site.
4. Show accountability (Jacob). Make it clear where they money goes!
5. Make it easy for people to find you (Jonathon). Optimize your search engine marketing. Start by getting as many high-quality links to your site as possible - and link out to other good sites.
6. Segment your way to success (Jonathan and Jacob). Talk with supporters differently, depending on who they are, how they give, the ways in which they support you, etc.
7. Test, test, test (Jonathon). Never do one version of any appeal or newsletter. Test different versions so you can learn and improve all the time.
8. Make your supporters your messengers (Katya). Ask your supporters to spread the word among their friends and family.
9. Offer recurring giving (Jacob). Mercy Corps does an amazing job of “supersizing” their donors into monthly gifts.
10. Don’t only ask. Thank and inspire too (Katya and Arlin). Show people the difference they are making.
Thank you to all who listened to us, and thank YOU for reading this blog.
Comment: (2)
Our Triple Bottom Line
- Thu, July 12 2007
- Filed under: Nonprofit leadership
It’s been a busy week - on Monday, I presented at the Association of Fundraising Professionals meeting here in DC. On Wednesday, I presented at the American Marketing Foundation Foundation annual conference, and today I hosted a free teleconference called, “Nonprofit 911” about how to fix ailing online giving programs (675 people registered, so clearly it struck a chord!). My experiences at these events have yielded loads of material for the blog, which I’ll be sharing for the next week or two.
Today, I want to highlight some points made by my professional mentor and marketing idol, Bill Novelli, who delivered the AMA conference’s closing speech. His theme was the nonprofit sector’s triple bottom line. Corporations have a single bottom line - shareholder value, which is driven by profits. As people working for the public good, we have a triple bottom line, he said. Namely: social change, stakeholder value and revenue generation.
What Bill said that was most interesting was that we’ve got to stop thinking about those three line items as separate and instead think of them collectively. Specifically, he said we have to seek the synergies between them. (Oops, I broke my vow never to use the word “synergy” in print, but at least I’m quoting someone else. I promise to keep my pledge with respect to “leverage.”) You could save the whales, send out plastic wristbands to thank your members, and sell whale-embroidered neckties at the holidays as separate endeavors, and they might work in isolation. But wouldn’t it make more sense to save the whales by making the other two endeavors reinforce your mission of saving the whales - like naming whale pods after your most generous members and reporting on how they’re doing regularly to show value, and selling whale-watching trips so that ecotourism dollars would drive more environmentally-friendly policies in areas home to whales? This is my example - Bill showed how AARP is building social impact into products from health care plans to financial products to achieve a self-reinforcing triple bottom line.
“Synergy is the most powerful part of your work, if you can figure it out,” he says.
I like to think we do this at Network for Good. Our mission is to get more resources to nonprofits online. We provide tools and training to help nonprofits get more money online (stakeholder value) and also sell special paid (but inexpensive) fundraising services to nonprofits, which reinforces our mission. This hasn’t always been the case in my career—I remember once working with a furniture company on a co-branded campaign that sure did nothing to promote social change. Oops.
Is your triple bottom line reinforcing your mission?
Comment: (3)
Please, make it fun
- Tue, July 10 2007
- Filed under: Fun stuff
Call me vacuous. Call me vapid. Call me shallow. But I like most things to be fun. I’m more inclined to do something that’s fun than something that’s onerous, boring, depressing or guilt-induced. And I think I’m not the only one. In fact, there’s sound social theory saying people tend to do things that are fun, easy and popular. So I suppose fun is not so vacuous after all. It’s a way to provoke action.
Please consider injecting a little fun into your messages from time to time. Please. My email box overfloweth with onerous, boring, depressing and guilt-laden messages. So does my mailbox, along with a lot of bills. I’ll pay attention to ANYTHING with a gleam of levity. Doing good should feel good, at least some of the time.
I can hear you now—you’re saying, but there is nothing fun about my cause. I challenge you to think differently.
Helping kids with life-threatening illness - can be fun. I’m a huge fan of Make-a-Wish’s new donor-centric campaign, showing the joy of supporting their organization. It’s truly inspirational. Click below to watch it on their site.
Making a donation to your favorite charity - can be fun. Just ask lettuce lady. (Click below, it’s FUN.)
Joining the fight against poverty - can be fun. Just ask anyone in the Power Circle.
Hearing an anti-drunk driving message - can be fun.
And yes, these campaigns are effective - they brought in some serious cash and most important, they contributed to vital social change.
Comment: (0)
Getting personal
- Tue, July 03 2007
- Filed under: Marketing essentials
Four months ago, talented blogger Britt Bravo tagged me for a meme. The meme was on media consumption. What’s a meme? It’s a contagious idea or unit of cultural information that one person can convey to another - like a joke, proverb, fashion, etc. In this context, as described by the Daily Meme, it’s a list of questions that you saw somewhere else and that you decided to answer yourself. Britt had a list of questions she answered about media consumption and wanted me and other bloggers to also share personal favorites in terms of reading, music, etc., as she had on her blog. I told Britt I’d reply, but that I wanted to post on the whole concept of memes because I didn’t think you, dear readers, were exactly dying to know what magazines I read. In fact, to be honest, my first reaction to ‘memes’ was that they were were not that interesting. I suspect you come to this blog to learn about marketing rather than my personal preferences about other topics. Then I started to wonder… maybe I was wrong (and we all know THAT is such a rare occurence).
In all seriousness, I think there is a good reason memes like this thrive and spread. Our desire to connect is profound. Our tendency to search for common ground is strong. The personal is fascinating - and powerful.
That means that when we support something, including a cause, we want to know and understand the people who are part of it. The people who work there, the people helped, the people who support it. That’s why it’s so important to put a human face on our work.
I recently advised a few nonprofits that have amazing staff - specifically, groups of lawyers that run around protecting threatened lands - to put those people at the center of their story. A “green swat team” is a more interesting than an “advocacy project.” I’d like to know about that swat team, and I’d support them.
An incredibly successful recent campaign with Barack Obama that several readers wrote me about (thanks, Samantha and others) was all about the personal. Barack is raising a lot online, and one of the more interesting appeals offered dinner with Barack to four random donors who gave any amount in a certain time period. Good idea.
So here’s the type of meme I’d like nonprofits to consider—Who’s the most unusual staff member at your organization? What’s the thing they’re most proud of accomplishing? What is the most surprising story of someone you’ve helped? Can you humanize your work and the things you make better in this way? I think we should. We create connections and common ground through the personal.
In that spirit, I read both the New Yorker and Us Weekly cover to cover. I like Made to Stick and Beyond Buzz for marketing reading. Waiting was the best fiction I’ve read lately. Big Love is my favorite TV viewing. And Death Cab for Cutie is recommended for your iTunes.
Comment: (0)
Make me believe I make a difference
- Mon, July 02 2007
- Filed under: Marketing essentials
I want more charities to make me believe that my actions will make a difference.
I want less gloom and doom and more inspiration.
I want to hear less about need and more about impact.
Do this with stories and charts. Or do it figuratively.
I like this way of dramatizing the power of signing a petition.
I like this way of showing small contributions can really stack up to something.
Thanks to Houtlust for these.
Show people they can be powerful. They will want to help you.
Comment: (1)
To Increase Charitable Donations, Appeal to the Heart—Not the Head
- Fri, June 29 2007
- Filed under: Fundraising essentials
By Jono Smith
Feelings, not analytical thinking, drive donations. According to a new study (PDF link) conducted by Deborah Small, a Wharton marketing professor, and colleagues George Loewenstein & Paul Slovic, if organizations want to raise money for a charitable cause, it is far better to appeal to the heart than to the head.
From Knowledge@Wharton
One pitch for charity described the needs of Rokia, a young girl in Africa who is desperately poor and faces starvation. Another pitch talks about food shortages affecting more than three million children, many of whom are homeless. Which pitch is more effective? Not surprisingly, it’s the first, but Wharton marketing professor Deborah Small and two co-authors delve deeper into the issue of sympathy and how it relates to charitable giving. Their paper is titled, “Sympathy and Callousness: The Impact of Deliberative Thought on Donations to Identifiable and Statistical Victims.”
That people would want to give money to identifiable victims like Rokia rather than unnamed famine victims may not seem all that surprising. But Small and her colleagues, in a series of field experiments, delved deeper into the issue of sympathy and how it relates to charitable giving. The researchers found that if people are presented with a personal case of an identifiable victim along with statistical data about similar victims caught up in a larger pattern of illness, hunger or neglect, overall donations actually decline. In addition, they found that if people are told about the inconsistent levels of sympathy evoked by identifiable and statistical victims—the “identifiable victim effect,” in the words of the researchers—people reduce their giving to identifiable victims but do not increase their giving to statistical victims.
Comment: (5)
Legacy Marketing
- Thu, June 28 2007
- Filed under: Marketing essentials
Graham Richards writes in from the UK to share a very successful legacy marketing idea he used when he was working for St. Gemma’s Hospice, the UK’s 4th largest hospice, which serves Leeds, a major city in West Yorkshire, England.
St. Gemma’s relies on gifts in Wills to bring in around 25% of their voluntary income and, as such, are very proactive in communicating the message about this form of giving.
Our ad agency, who give all their time for free, came up with a very simple idea, which any of your readers who have visited the UK might recognise. On buildings in towns and cities, you will see blue plaques, which commemorate a famous person. They tend to catch the eye of the passers by, as you don’t see that many around.
Our agency designed a fake blue plaque, just like the real ones, but with the message: “It isn’t just remarkable people who can leave a legacy”, “Help St. Gemma’s Hospice with a gift in your Will”.
We started off using A4 size posters, then we made some life-size laminated plaques, which were hung in the windows of our 15 charity shops. However, the most effective use of them was when we had two cast aluminium plaques made, which I then got permission to mount on buildings in the city centre (photo below).
This was 2 years ago and last year saw our biggest legacy income to date at around £1.8million (approx $3.5 million), which is pretty good for a local charity in a provincial city. I’ve recently moved on to a new charity, the Ear Trust, who support cochlear implants in deaf adults and kids, but will be starting my legacy messages to a whole new audience!
Thanks, Graham!
Comment: (4)
Get $35,000 for your good idea
- Tue, June 26 2007
- Filed under: Fundraising essentials
Smart organizations don’t only have conversations with their audiences—they also act on what their audiences say. American Express is doing it. So is Hillary Clinton. Are you?
Our colleagues at the Case Foundation did it today. They have launched a grant program that lets the public decide who should receive their funds. The New York Times covered this unusually open approach today. If you’ve got a good idea, please consider applying. And think about how you can involve your audiences in your work. If you’re not sure they should set your direction, at least let them help you make your marketing choices.











