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 winners of the second annual America’s Giving Challenge were announced today by The Case Foundation, Causes and PARADE. The 30-day national online competition resulted in more than 105,000 donations which helped to raise $2.1 million for nonprofit causes. As part of the Challenge, participants competed for daily and overall cash awards based on the number of donations to their cause, not dollars raised. A total of $170,000 in awards, $150,000 funded by the Case Foundation and $20,000 funded by the Aspen Institute, was announced at Challenge launch, and during the last week of the challenge, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation announced an additional contribution of $75,000 in award money.
For background on the Challenge and tips for participating in such events, go to this previous post.
How did the winners win? Often, it was good old fashioned organizing - taken online. Here is a story from one of the winners - Atlas Corps - shared by Causes on its blog:
“Atlas Corps’ success was possible because of two main strategies. First, we signed up 150 ‘Campaign Captains’ before the contest started. These Captains agreed to get between 5-10 of their friends to give to Atlas Corps during the contest. Second, we signed up about 50 people to join one of their Giving Clubs. People joined the 30-day, 20-day, 10-day and 5-day giving clubs and made a commitment to go online and donate each day. We also decided to try to win one of the early Day Challenges because we knew it would only get harder with each week. The $42,000 we raised in this contest will allow us to bring four new Atlas Corps Fellows to the U.S. in March 2010. This is a huge victory for us and one made possible by empowering our supporters to go out there and get their friends to donate to us.”
This holiday, don’t forget that when it comes to spreading the word, you are well served by thinking outside your own organization. The greatest value of the Giving Challenge is the new messengers it inspires and the engagement it prompts. Take a page from Atlas and ask your champions - whether they be volunteers, donors, beneficiaries, partners or fans - to not simply give but to also recruit.
I’m thankful for you - and not just because it’s thanksgiving.
Thanks for working for a good cause.
Thanks for making the world a better place.
Thanks for trying to be more effective at both.
Thanks for teaching me how all the above are done.
In your honor, I just made a donation to Tweetsgiving. The donation will go to building a classroom, orphanage/boarding facility, cafeteria and library at a school in Tanzania! Happy Thanksgiving!
This post was created as part of a global groundswell of gratitude called Tweetsgiving. The celebration, created by US nonprofit Epic Change, is an experiment in social innovation that seeks to change the world through the power of gratitude. Epic Change launched the original TweetsGiving celebration in November 2008 as a 48-hour celebration of gratitude and giving that successfully raised over $10,000 to build a classroom in Arusha, Tanzania.
I just got the following from CARE in my inbox. The subject line “25,000 people will die this Thanksgiving.” Compare and contrast the email (pictured below) to the other two images.
Which made you want to donate? Let me know via comments. I predict it was not #1. Why? 25,000 people dying is a fact that overwhelms, depresses and paralyzes the human psyche. Dr. Paul Slovic did an exceptionally good presentation for the wonderful Communications Network last week on this very topic, and he showed the collapse model of human compassion. The bigger the number, the less the compassion. This may not be rational but it sure is human. Click on the collapse model image for more on how our minds work. And watch the presentation.
What if your annual report were a Gratitude Report? What if you told stories about what your supporters did rather than trumpeting what you did?
It might look like this. This is a real masterpiece of gratitude. And it inspires generosity.
How do you tap your inner generous spirit? Here’s your checklist.
1. Give away: Give away everything you can and it will pay off. For example, at Network for Good, we give away free training, free newsletters and free fundraising and marketing tips. Our sales and customer service staff give generously of their time, never rushing someone off the phone. This makes quite a few people love us – and they go on to buy, recommend or evangelize our paid services. Which pays off in the long run. If we tried to nickel and dime nonprofits, they would not feel the same way and we’d have fewer funds in the long run. Keep this approach in mind if you’re a membership or services organization.
2. Give thanks. Spend a lot more time thanking donors and reporting on their impact than asking them for more money. Make them feel treasured rather than going after their treasures. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the number one reason donors quit supporting an organization is how they were treated by the organization. They hate too many appeals, not enough thanks and a lack of information on impact.
3. Give credit. It’s not enough to be grateful. Give your donors the credit for everything you do. Don’t say, “with your donation, we did xyz;” say, “you did xyz.” Don’t say “we’re so great,” say “you’re so great.” Tell your donors they are doing good works every day of the week through their support of you. This turns donors into owners of your mission, and you can’t get more powerful than that. Pride Foundation - great job in showing how this is done.
Nancy Schwartz has lots of advice for you: Get the 2009 Top Tagline report here.
The updated guide shows nonprofits top tagline approaches for stronger messaging, and features a directory of over 2,500 nonprofit tagline examples for organizations to use in creating strong messages. The 2009 Report provides everything an organization needs to jump start its tagline development process:
· Why a Nonprofit’s Name Isn’t Enough
· How a Strong Tagline Benefits Your Organization – Useful for developing support among colleagues and leadership
· The 10 Have-Tos for Successful Taglines
· Using Words that Work
· The 7 Deadly Sins, 9 Snores and 5 Best Ways to Antagonize Your Audience – What not to do
· Research, Create, Revise, Test, Repeat – The right steps to take to craft a potent tagline.
Find out in my free training next week. And check out all the free teleconferences at Network for Good in the coming weeks! We’d love to have you join us.
Date
Training
Registration
Thursday, November 12 at 1 p.m. Eastern
Fundraising with an Affinity Card Program
Tuesday, November 17 at 1 p.m. Eastern
Fundraiser’s Confidential: How to Adapt to the 6 Trends Changing the Fundraiser-Donor Relationship Forever
Tuesday, December 8 at 1 p.m. Eastern
Is Your Story Big Enough? Uncover the emotional spark that turns current and potential supporters into true believers.
The more I Tweet and post on Facebook and blog, the more I am struggling to have time to really LISTEN to people. I don’t want to follow and friend more people than I can sincerely engage with, but perhaps that makes me seem like a diva. This is a condundrum many of us face. All I know is this - I want to err on the side of engagement that is authentic. I want to truly be on the other side of the conversation, at least some of the time. But it is not easy.
At the same time, it has never been so important. In this noisy world, we are pleasantly stunned when someone devotes their full attention to us. Imagine if you did that for the people you want to reach. Imagine what might change.
Bad things happen when we stop paying attention to the people around us. We lose them. Our relationships suffer. Social injustices occur – just ask a homeless person how invisible she feels. Our supporters abandon us. Our customers hate us. (Our customers really hate us – look no further than untied.com, a website devoted to people frustrated their complaints are not heard by United Airlines.)
Extraordinary things happen when we recognize people – when we truly hear, see and acknowledge them. Listening – just listening, simple as it is – creates great relationships, strong societies, powerful organizations and profitable, popular businesses.
This is a fascinating topic - and one I’ve been contemplating a long time.
I think I (and almost everyone else) give for two reasons: personal and social ROI (a great semantic framing I got from Eric Foley). You give for 1.) how it makes you feel about something you care about or some other form of personal benefit, and 2.) you give to make a difference. It might be to make a difference in an empirical way with respect to an organization OR to make a difference in a social relationship (like when a friend asks you to support her cause). Almost everything comes back to these two things. Really.
A while back (3 years ago!), I blogged my own list – FYI here it is. I don’t think it’s changed much.
Reasons I give:
a. Someone I know asked me to give
b. I felt emotionally moved by someone’s story
c. I want to feel I’m not powerless in the face of need and can help (this is especially true during disasters)
d. I want to feel I’m changing someone’s life
e. I feel a sense of closeness to a community or group
f. I need a tax deduction
g. I want to memorialize someone (who is struggling or died of a disease, for example)
h. I was raised to give to charity – it’s tradition in my family
i. I want to be “hip” and supporting this charity (ie, wearing a yellow wrist band) is in style
j. It makes me feel connected to other people and builds my social network
k. I want to have a good image for myself/my company
l. I want to leave a legacy that perpetuates me, my ideals or my cause
m. I feel fortunate (or guilty) and want to give something back to others
n. I give for religious reasons – God wants me to share my affluence
o. I want to be seen as a leader/role model
I can’t tell from today’s book excerpt where the writers of this new book are going, but it seems they are urging us to focus on the #2 - the making a difference part of giving - in a more dispassionate way. I think most donors want to know their gifts have impact but unless they are a high net worth individual or an outlier like giving circle member, the amount of effort the average donor will expend on determining their impact and using it to shape their giving patterns is going to be minimal. Heck, we don’t even spend that kind of time on management of our 401k. So the key is going to be easy, apples-to-apples measurement of nonprofit effectiveness. Like 3 stars. And that is really hard to accomplish. In short, if we’re being urged to think in business terms, we have a supply problem (no great, consistent, comparable data from nonprofits, though GreatNonprofits, Charity Navigator and others are trying to get us there) and we have a demand problem (not that many donors are going to spend a lot of time and energy analyzing their impact - they want simple answers). That’s going to make this kind of change very slow.
But that kind of change has to happen to some degree. Donors want a feeling they ARE having SOME KIND of impact, and they want SOME feeling of involvement in the cause they are supporting. We have to do better to meet those needs. Of that much, I’m sure. Because if we feel our money is wasted, we lose on both forms of ROI - personal AND social.
We just had a happy moment at my job. In a sign of the steady growth in online giving, even amid the recent recession, Network for Good has now processed over $300 million in online donations to more than 50,000 charities since we got started. This year, we’ve distributed money to 60% more charities than last year. The average Network for Good nonprofit is raising the same dollar amounts as in 2008, through more, smaller gifts. To illustrate, the total number of donations through Network for Good is up 92% year to date, but the dollar value of those donations is up 43% compared to last year.
That is good news.
My colleague Kate Olsen has observed the following trends:
•The economy is fragile, but giving online is going strong. Network for Good is seeing double the number of donations this year, just at lower dollar amounts than in years past. The growth in online giving is particularly encouraging in comparison to offline giving trends.
•Recurring gifts are a lifeline to nonprofits during a recession. A steady number of donors are setting up automatic monthly, quarterly or annual gifts that provide dependable and compounding cash flow for recipient organizations. At Network for Good, 1 in 5 gifts is a recurring donation this year, which is comparable to last year.
•More people are giving the gift of charity to others. Year-to-date sales of Network for Good’s charity gift card (The Good Card) are up 60%, as more individuals and companies choose to say Thank You, Congratulations, and Happy Holidays with the gift of charity. Repeat after me: No more ties! No more scarves!
•A rise in grassroots and peer-to-peer fundraising is driving more donation activity online. For any given charity, the most significant source of donations is its own website, but Network for Good is seeing ten-fold growth this year to date in donations made through social networking sites like Causes on Facebook, Change.org and others.
•Corporations increasingly insert philanthropy into their marketing and rewards programs. Corporate giving programs like the Capital One “No Hassle” Giving Site make it easy use your card to give to any charity on your card or to donate rewards (with no fees taken out). You’re also going to see more and more so-called embedded giving, which inserts a charitable donation into a commercial transaction. This can be a mixed bag for the sector, as Lucy points out, but it is not going away.
The even better news is the best is yet to come - annually, about 40% of giving occurs in December alone.
So why is all this happening? Is this trend just cannibalized offline gifts?
Not really. Steve from Blackbaud gave a great review of his data today via NTEN, and it tells a story that is consistent with what we’re seeing. Namely, online giving is growing fast (even though it’s still only 5% of overall giving), it brings in younger, wealthier and higher-dollar givers, and it’s a top source of new donors. So you can’t really choose to ignore it. But you also shouldn’t choose to ignore other forms of fundraising. Online donors often give offline after giving online. That raises an interesting issue - we talk a lot about online donors renewing at lower rates and switching to offline giving - while offline givers don’t typically switch to online. I’m not sure how much of this is the donors and how much of it is how and where we cultivate them. I think it’s a mixture of both - which is what Steve said today as well.
1. You’re nuts if you’re not doing online fundraising, especially this December when online giving will peak for the year.
2. You need to remember online donors are more loyal when they are cultivated through many channels - online and off. So be expansive when thinking about how to build a relationship with them in the New Year.
Here are some posts you should be reading. Transparency is a hot topic - the new black, really - so what does this mean? How much is the right amount? For whom? What are the ups and downs of demand for tranparency, which is here to stay.
About.com’s social media guru Joanne Fritz has a must-read Non-Profit Blog Carnival here. Get 8 posts with great fundraising tips (and a link to my post earlier this week, that makes 9!) in a year when we could all use them. As Joanne points us, CNN just said fundraiser is a stressful job that pays badly. Fundraisers, unite! We can do this.
As Cause Marketing blog has pointed out, October means breast cancer awareness month - which also means saturation of cause-related marketing messages. Unless you understand how to stand out - by storytelling.
This is a photo I took in Silver Spring, Maryland, at the Ulta beauty store. The window stopped me in my tracks - what was in the window, I wondered? There I saw letters from breast cancer survivors, their friends and family. There is something very moving about reading someone’s personal letters. This was a great way to call attention to the cause - and the company - in an authentic, moving way. What better way to show you support the breast cancer cause than to put the spotlight on those dealing with it?
ULTA has over 330 stores nationwide participating, according to their corporate website. People are asked to write their stories of honor and encouragement in a letter and bring it to their local ULTA store where it will be posted in the windows. According the company, “Placed end to end, all of ULTA’s windows stretch over six miles, each of which will be devoted to sharing the stories of those that have fought, are bravely fighting or have been personally affected by breast cancer in some way.”
Use this concept! If your nonprofit is on a busy street, how about posting letters and photos from people affected by your cause in the window? How about having your next e-Newsletter written in the form of a letter from someone affected firsthand by your issue? What if volunteers wrote hand-written thank you letters to your supporters explaining why they love your cause?
The power of one voice telling a good story is more potent than your organizational voice any day,
Update: Do read Cause Marketing’s suggestions on how to tweak this campaign. I still like it more than Paul did - but yes, pictures and a stronger call to action couldn’t hurt. I think the storytelling was terrific.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy today said the nation’s biggest charities are forecasting a 9 percent decline in giving this year - the biggest drop since the publication started tracking private donations in the early 90s. In an interview with the radio program Marketplace, publisher Stacy Palmer said it’s affecting how nonprofits ask for money:
One of the things most nonprofits are very aware of is that some people don’t have jobs and they can’t appeal to them, so they’re focusing on the people who are affluent still and who still have money to give. They’re very careful to not make a pitch to somebody who can’t afford to give.
I’m not sure that’s the case for most nonprofits - or if it is, it applies only to major donors, which is one circumstance in which a nonprofit may have intimate knowledge of a donor’s circumstances. Most nonprofits are unlikely to know who among their supporters has a job.
In fact, the Chronicle on its website suggests as much (registration required to view article). Apparently most of fundraising is as aggressive as ever:
The push to be more aggressive in seeking donations continues. The biggest charities are stepping up their efforts to solicit individuals, trying to explain more clearly why they need money, focusing on donors who have stopped giving, experimenting with new methods of online fund raising, and putting more time and effort into securing planned gifts. Charities are also reorganizing their fund-raising departments, sometimes because they have been forced to lay off employees. They are encouraging fund raisers to share responsibilities and work more closely with people in different departments.
Here’s my take: you cannot possibly know the economic circumstances of all your individual donors - though hopefully you’re aware of the status of your biggest donors. And you can’t stop asking for money entirely. So what are you supposed to do? Ask, but with four things in mind:
1. Empathy is appropriate. Acknowledge times are hard - for everyone - right now. If a donor can’t give, they’ll appreciate you understand this.
2. Show you are tightening your belt. Describe every step your organization has taken to tighten your belt and operate as efficiently as possible this year.
3. Demonstrate that all donations count. Because you’re stretching every dollar, make the point that every donation helps more than ever this year - whatever the size of the donation.
4. Show impact. Thank your donors profusely for their past help and explain in tangible, vivid terms how their donations have made a big difference. And then do it again and again and again. Donors usually don’t stop giving because they don’t have money. They usually stop giving because of a surfeit of appeals and a shortage of thanks. Show donors that they are making good things happen - and give them credit for every piece of good news you have about your programs.
A last point: if you have to reorganize your fundraising department or merge departments because of downsizing - something the Chronicle suggests is prevalent - look at this as an opportunity. It’s a chance to show you’re focused on efficiency and it’s also a great way to get rid of siloes where they should not have existed (ie, between marketing and development). Tough times can hold good lessons. Let them make you a better fundraiser.
SuzyQuzy, Flickr
Photo from today of me with my hosts at the Beautiful Foundation
I’m in Seoul, where I was fortunate enough to present to 300 nonprofits at a fundraising conference organized by the Seoul-based Beautiful Foundation. The Beautiful Foundation, which bears the slogan, Beyonnd Charity Toward Change, is a nine-year-old public interest foundation here that grants $7 million annually. Its flagship giving campaign, 1% Sharing, is well known to South Koreans and has inspired a growing philanthropic sector. It urges people to give 1% of their money, time or talent to a good cause. The foundation staff say their name comes from a Dorothy Parker quote: “To a charitable organization, money was sent with good will. What is beautiful is not the words, but the will.” (Personally, as a fundraiser, I like the Dorothy Parker quote, “The two most beautiful words in the English language are ‘cheque enclosed.’”).
Giving in Korea is beginning to take off as the country enjoys prosperity. Two-thirds of South Koreans give money and a quarter volunteer, and the amount donated is increasing annually.
I wanted to highlight some of the foundation’s great fundraising work, which seeks to build on these trends. Their Lego-like building block project had people collect coins in building blocks, which were then put together in the city to showcase charitable giving. You can see some of the blocks behind us in our photo above. And there is a great write-up of the project here.
Supporters bought colourful Lego block banks to collect their donations. These were purchased online or in bulk and given to business employees or school students. A leaflet explaining how people could take part was distributed with each block bank. The leaflet also had stories from various supporters who came from all walks of life. Over the event period, supporters collected their monies in the block bank; on 6 December 2008 they brought their block banks to a central location in Seoul to join in a group Lego-building activity. Those who lived outside the capital were able to send their block banks before this activity.
This year, they are creating a project that involves real leaves imprinted with the slogan that has a double meaning of roughly, “Hope does not fall,” and “hope can’t be defeated.” Here are two leaves they left with me.
What they have done so well, particularly with the Lego project, is not only inspiring giving but making it participatory and visible. This is so important in creating a sense that giving is growing and establishing a new social norm. It is a great model for all of us to follow.
What can you do to make the act of giving more engaging?
Posted by katya on Tue, November 24, 2009
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