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.
Careful what you call your audience
Posted by katya on Wed, December 13, 2006
I remember being involved in some audience research a few years back about “caregivers”—people who take care of an elderly parent, for example, or a chronically ill spouse. The main finding of the research was that “caregivers” did not self-identify as “caregivers.” So a marketing campaign to promote useful resources for “caregivers” was not working. It had no audience, because the audience did not see itself as bearing the label bestowed upon it.
Now my friends at Spitfire have a fascinating, free new report called Discovering the Activation Point that reinforces this point. A key finding, says Spitfire, is:
When nonprofits approach their audiences and label them “activists” or “advocates,” it creates distance between the organization and the people they are trying to influence. While we might want our audiences to identify themselves as activists, more likely they identify themselves emotionally as concerned parents, responsible homeowners, or pet lovers. Having an actual conversation with them and taking into consideration what they care about and how they identify themselves is far more likely to be effective at persuading them to act.
Well said, Spitfire. The report then digs into how to get people to act, if labels that imply action don’t work. Some key findings:
An activation point occurs when the right people at the right time are persuaded to take an action that leads to measurable social change.
When people have a high level of awareness of an issue, they are not motivated by more information. In fact, it can contribute to their state of inertia.
Hope is the only absolutely, positively essential ingredient to campaigns trying to inspire action. You must make people believe that the situation will get better – with their help.
There are several stages to successful persuasion:
Stage One: People need to know, believe and care enough to want to act.
Stage Two: People must have the will to act.
Stage Three: Once people act, they must be rewarded for doing so.
Timing is everything. Deciding when it is the right time to persuade people is a critical factor to defining an activation point – and can be very tricky.
Understanding an audience’s comfort zone is key. There are clear limits to what even the most passionate people are willing to do, especially if the “ask” is outside their comfort zone. On the other hand, asking people to do things within their comfort zone allows them to feel good about helping without putting themselves at risk.
People are selfish. They need to feel an issue is directly relevant to their own lives before they will act.
I took this low-quality shot from my car window the other day. This car was next to me in traffic, and it got me thinking.
If we’re passionate about a cause, we may wear it on our sleeve, or on our bumper, with great pride. Such zeal can be good and bad. Good, in that passion can be wonderfully persuasive. Bad, in that too much passion (especially the angry, slightly raving kind) isolates you from human engagement and makes you a lousy marketer. I get a certain feeling when I see cars like this: “wow, that looks like a nice, well-intentioned person, but hope I don’t run into them at a cocktail party.” If you are a very loud preacher for your cause who rarely breaks to listen to your audience - or take in their perspective - you could end up with an audience of one. Yourself. Be passionate, but be in a conversation with potential supporters. Good marketing is not a stickerfest, nor is it a monologue. It’s a give and take.
There are a lot of great personal fundraising widgets proliferating now (just ask Beth)—what makes ours different is that you can upload personal photos and text, link to your own video, and fundraise for any of more than one million charities—including the ones you work for! In designing the badge, we put the spotlight on the individual fundraiser for two reasons: first, the number one reason people give is because someone asks them (especially someone they know) and second, people like to create things with their personal imprint. The badge enables this, plus it tracks donations in real time so people can see the difference they are making. Network for Good processes the donations and transfers the funds directly to the nonprofit.
On our site, you can build a badge for your nonprofit and give it to your supporters—or let them create their own. Better yet, create it through Yahoo!’s Network of Giving campaign and your nonprofit could receive up to $50,000 in matching funds, plus billing on Yahoo!’s web site. Great publicity!
So far, it works on nearly all blogs and some social networking sites, and we also have a simple text version you can put in your email signature—but it’s not yet working everywhere. It’s a Beta work in progress! Try it out and share your triumphs and frustrations here or at our badge blog.
The word QUIZ came into being in a very unusual way. One day in the late eighteenth century, an Irishman named Daly bet a friend that he could introduce a new word into the language in 24 hours. That night, Daly went all around the city of Dublin writing QUIZ on walls. The next day everyone in Dublin was asking, “What’s a quiz?” Daly won his bet, and the word QUIZ became a part of the English language - literally overnight. Because Daly’s quiz tested people’s ability to come up with a quick answer, the word has come to mean a short, fast test.
In Chicago, a friend cuts off the end of roast beef before she cooks it. She does it because her mother does it. Her mother does it because her grandmother did it. So one day, the friend asks her grandmother why for years she has cut the end off the roast beef. The reason? Her grandmother says, “because my pan is too small.”
I love this story because it tells us so much of how humans think. We so often do as we have always done out of tradition or habit or imitation without questioning why. We move within our personal frames of reference, over and over, back and forth, until our ways are ingrained and unquestioned.
I do this so much myself. And deep within the comfort of habit, I find myself irritated at the end of the day when my eight-year-old asks, “why?” to so many things. Yet she is so wise for asking. We should all ask why the end comes off the roast beef more often. I know I should. When I do is when I make a breakthrough on a problem, idea or project.
Reject the frame you’re given, just a little, and see where it leads you.
Posted by Britt Bravo on Tue, December 05 2006 Britt Bravo is a Writer, Podcast Producer, Nonprofit Consultant from Oakland, CA
Hello Katya’s Nonprofit Marketing Blog Readers!
Katya was kind enough to ask me to guest blog here so I thought I’d share a post with you that I recently posted on the NetSquared blog:
What makes us write a donation check, spread the word about a campaign, or show up for a meeting or protest? What makes us want to act for social change? Emotional connection. Passion for a cause.
For the past year, I have been writing for NetSquared about nonprofits and NGOs that are using the social web to cultivate donors, advocates and activists for their organization and their cause. I find that the campaigns I respond the most to are the ones with heart, whimsy and oftentimes, a story. Here are my picks for the Best Internet Marketing for a Cause 2006 (in alphabetical order). I hope you’ll add your picks in the comments.
1. Sign a pledge and track the impact of their pledge on a map.
2. Download Wille Nelson singing Bob Dylan’s “Blowing in the Wind.”
3. Watch a movie about mountaintop removal on YouTube.
4. View the National Memorial for the Mountains on Google Earth. Each flag represents a mountain that has been destroyed.
Jane Goodall Institute’s Geoblog: The Jane Goodall Insitute has created a geoblog, the Gombe Chimpanzee Blog, Using Google Earth, the geoblog allows readers/viewers to view Gombe National Park in Tanzania while they read entries by Emily Wroblewski, a field researcher who is studying the Gombe Chimpanzees. I can’t imagine a more powerful tool for environmental nonprofits and NGOs than to “fly” your supporters and potential supporters over the area of the world you are working in.
Human Rights Video Hub by WITNESS and Global Voices:WITNESS and Global Voices Online have teamed up to pilot a Human Rights Video Hub where anyone anywhere can upload human rights related videos to raise awareness and launch campaigns. You can check out the pilot project on the Global Voices blog here. Among the videos up right now is footage of police dispersing student protestors in China, UCLA police using a taser gun on a student in a library, and video shot by journalist Brad Will during the protests in Oaxaca, right before he was killed. Launch of the completed Hub is planned for 2007.
Kiva:Kiva is a nonprofit that allows individuals like you and me to make loans through PayPal to entrepreneurs who are working their way out of poverty. You can watch a 16-minute documentary about Kiva on the FRONTLINE World web site. When the documentary aired on Ocober 31st, the response from viewers was so great that it brought the Kiva site down. As co-founder Jessica Jackley Flannery said, “Kiva started out of relationships and love, ideally I would love for that to be present in every single transaction that happens. People connecting.”
Menu of Hope by Chez Pim: Led by Chez Pim, food bloggers donated a delicious array of food-related raffle prizes for the second annual Menu for Hope in 2005. Each $5 donation that a reader made qualified them for one virtual raffle ticket to win the prize of their choosing from the prize list. The campaign raised $17, 000. Clearly, the way to a donor’s pocket is through her stomach. For more info. about this year’s campaign for the United Nation’s World Food Programme click here.
Sam Suds and the Case of PVC, the Poison Plastic by Free Range Studios and the Center for Health, Environment and Justice In this online video produced by Free Range Studios and the Center for Health, Environment and Justice, Sam Suds is a bar of soap in charge of protecting the Johnson family from dangerous toxins. His next case is to find a mysterious character called “PVC”. He’s not making a lot of progress until a rubber duck he calls “Duckface” tells him,"It’s this rubber duck I’ve been seeing, he seemed nice enough at first, but I’m starting to suspect that he ain’t made of rubber. . . I think he’s PVC.”
What are your favorite examples of the Best Internet Marketing for a Cause?
Here are two interesting campaigns for doing good, full of possibilities for imitation:
1.) Modern Day Robin Hood
Here’s an interesting campaign, complete with a wildly popular YouTube video of a cash giveaway, a home page where you can buy visibility like the Million Dollar Home Page, interactive voting, etc.
2.) Starbucks “Chain of Cheer”
Check out their pay-it-forward type of goodwill campaign, which combines fun stuff online with guerrilla marketing giveaways like Robin Hood’s on the street.
We’re entered the one month a year when people are most inclined to do something nice for someone. How can you capitalize on the holiday spirit to generate excitement and action for your cause, drawing on the social marketing mantra—make it fun, easy and popular? Remember, for the donor, it’s not just about doing good, it’s about feeling good.
The comments to Bill’s guest blog are interesting, and they underline the fact that nonprofits don’t always doing a good job showing they are unique or different. There are at least two reasons for that: 1) they aren’t unique or 2) they are doing a poor job showing their unique qualities.
Draw the following picture, which is a combination of thinking from Jim Collins’ hedgehog concept and BBMG‘s branding thinking. What is in that sweet spot in the middle—the intersection of what you do well, what your audience wants and what’s unique about you? Is there anyone else with the same sweet spot? If so, you may have a problem.
Stake a strong competitive position - a position no one else has - in your field and in the minds of your audience. Then make clear in all communications your unique importance in the pursuit of good. If you can’t do that, maybe you should be merging with someone who can.
Guest Star Blogger Bill Strathmann: Why aren’t we merging more?
Posted by katya on Wed, November 29, 2006
Below is the second in an occasional series of guest-star blogs from smart people with something interesting to say. Bill Strathmann is CEO of Network for Good and he believes your nonprofit should have an urge to merge—and that your funders should be putting up the cash to make it happen.
This month was busy for corporate mergers and acquisitions and in fact 2006 is matching the level of acquisitions of the dot-boom late nineties. I don’t know whether this is true in the nonprofit sector (anyone have data on this?), but with 120 new nonprofits every day, lord knows we need more nonprofit mergers.
Before taking on the CEO role here at Network for Good, I used to be a management consultant with Andersen and my specialty (in addition to nonprofits) was something called PMI – post merger integration. I was responsible for helping large and mid-sized companies deliver on the synergy promises that their CEOs made to the street during the courtship phase of the deal. Now, having been at Network for Good close to 3 years and having done close to 3 mergers (DirectHelp in 2004, Groundspring in 2005, and What Goes Around in 2006– not technically a merger), I see many of the merger benefits that exist in the for profit sector, but unique nonprofit barriers to getting them done.
Everyone knows that most corporate mergers fail; about 2/3 of them. The reasons they typically fail is that deals are done for financial reasons, but the first two letters of merger are Me. They fail for “people” or cultural reasons. I think that the corporate merger failure phenomenon is directly related to the reason there are not more nonprofit mergers.
Long-term, the financial reasons for doing a deal are either increased revenues or decreased expenses. For publicly traded companies this results in an increased earnings per share (EPS) and stock price. Corporations estimate the increase in margin and set their purchase price based on those projections and their expected impact on EPS.
Two things are lost in translation when you consider mergers in our sector.
1) Nonprofits don’t have a metric like EPS. While we can measure reduced expenses it is difficult to objectively point to increased value.
2) Increased stock prices enable corporations to buy out executives with attractive financial packages that make for a pretty sweet consolation prize that goes to those who end up in the “headcount savings” category. There is no consolation prize for those people in the nonprofit sector.
While the first point is key, I think the second point is the primary reason nonprofit mergers are so rare. If two nonprofits consider a merger it is seldom for revenue reasons – yes there are occasions were there is a good earned income story or the blend of funders is so different that there is a good contributed income story. For the most part, though, nonprofits come together because they can increase their social impact with a reduced cost base. How do they reduce their cost base? Last time I checked most nonprofits are more like the professional services industry than any other. In other words, people (staff) provide the services and people (salaries and benefits) account for the majority of their expenses. So the majority of savings in a nonprofit merger will typically be “headcount savings.”
And guess what? There is no consolation prize. The losers are just losers.
This applies not only to the nonprofit employees but to the nonprofit board as well. And while the board members don’t lose their job they often lose an organization that is very near and dear.
So if the executive directors and board members are making the decision to merge or not to merge, then altruism is the only principle driving nonprofit mergers. That’s clearly not enough.
Funders talk about the need for consolidation in the nonprofit sector all the time. They are consistently challenged with multiple grant applications all addressing nuances of similar social problems and not enough money to fund them all. “Collaborate!” they beg.
If nonprofit executives are going to merge, there needs to be capital available that provides incentives to counterweight the disincentives of job loss. Major donors need to put their money where their mouth is. Without financial incentives mergers will remain a corporate phenomenon that never fully translates to the nonprofit sector.
During one point of my life, when I worked as a correspondent for Reuters, I had to file two to three stories a day, seven days a week, on every aspect of life in Cambodia. I didn’t sleep or relax much for the two years I did that, because I was constantly haunted by a sense that I was missing an important story. The fear became so strong that my lifetime recurring nightmare changed. For years, I dreamed I was a passenger in a crashing plane. When I worked for Reuters, I dreamed that I was watching a plane crash and could not tell anyone.
And then I had to cover a plane crash that killed 65 of 66 passengers on a Vietnam Airlines flight landing at Phnom Penh airport. Only a 4-year-old boy survived. The plane had overshot the runway after trying to land in low clouds and smashed into a stand of palms. Inert bodies and shattered pieces of the plane were strewn across a rice paddy, and when I arrived, villagers were scavenging the wreckage. For some reason the details I remember were a village boy, holding some dead person’s passport aloft, proudly, and the hand of a victim who was covered by a sheet. The man’s thumb peeped from the white cloth, exposing a clean, unharmed nail that formed a perfect half-moon.
It’s hard to tell this story without sounding dramatic, because it was drama of the worst kind. And the sight of that airplane made me forever impatient of all things petty and pointless. Life, I think, should be a great rush to do things that matter.
If you’re feeling worn out today, remember that your work matters. And that the faster you push to results through sheer effort or anything else, including marketing, the better. Take a few minutes to look at someone who is doing extraordinary things that matter. I got to know Scott’s work through Trent Stamp’s blog, and I remember every picture of his that I have ever seen because each fills your mind with the rush of what matters.
Images, whether a fleeting glance of a thumb or a disfigured girl transformed forever, matter profoundly. Put the images of your work over your desk to remind you what matters, and put them before your supporters so they know they matter, too.
I used to be Donor Services Supervisor for a large nonprofit, which meant my department was largely responsible for how donors were treated. A month into my new job (and I’m embarrassed it took me so long), I gave a small donation via our 800 number and was horrified at how badly it was handled. After fruitless attempts to improve the service, I ended up firing the outside firm that handled the 800 number and found some far better people. The lesson stuck.
I’d like to declare today “be your donor day.” Pretend you are one of your donors (you’ll have to disguise your voice) – or, better yet, recruit a friend to help you out— and do the following:
-Call your switchboard and see what happens when you ask for help or information
-Call your 800 number, if you have one, and ask some average questions and make a donation
-Send an email to your nonprofit’s donor services department (if you have one) and see if you get a cordial response
-See how many seconds it takes your friend to find out to donate on your web site - and to do it
-Donate to your own organization so you see how your thank-yous arrive (if they arrive) and how you’re treated
Here is a fact that should both horrify and inspire us.
According to a slew of research studies in the latest Chronicle of Philanthropy, (sorry, this link only works if you subscribe), most donors stop giving to charity because of dissatisfaction with how they were treated by the charity rather than personal constraints like financial problems.
The poor service? Too much mail, no thank-you acknowledgements, and little information on how their money was spent.
Wow. Are we as awful as the corporate sector on this front? (See this old post on the topic.)
This would be depressing except it’s so darn easy to fix. The more we improve in our customer service, the more we will stand out, because great customer service is an incredibly rare thing in this world. (Further proof courtesy of Seth here.) You’ll be feeling this fact acutely after dealing with airlines and store clerks in the coming days. But before you get too mad at them, ask yourself, how polite is your nonprofit? Forget web 2.0, fancy messages and everything else until you are:
1.) Asking your donors how and how often they want to hear from you, then honoring their preferences.
2.) Thanking your donors nicely.
3.) Telling your donors the difference they made.
Kiwi, shown below, is one of the most popular videos online right now, with more than 3 million views. Here’s a write-up of it:
There are several powerful messages behind Kiwi, but mainly, it makes you think: no matter how absurd and seemingly out of reach your dreams are, what’s stopping you from achieving them?… Some people have described how Kiwi “sticks in your subconscious.” I know that whenever I feel sad, I’m going to close my eyes, visualize the thing that’s in my way or keeping me down, and tilt my head to the side to see the happy side of it.
Sentimental, maybe even saccharine, but true. Limitations may not look like limitations if you shift your perspective and invest great effort. And, fortunately, this doesn’t always have to mean fleeting joy with a crashing end.
Four parts of a great fundraising appeal (or any message!)
Posted by katya on Tue, November 21, 2006
There are four components to a great message - connecting with an audience based on their values (C), rewarding (R) your audience, asking for a specific action to get that reward, and making it memorable. Remember this with the mnemonic device, CRAM! This works for fundraising letters but also for any marketing message. We need a different message for each audience, complete with a unique connection, reward, action, and memory. Don’t be tempted to avoid the work of creating messages for individual audiences by generating one big message with a little CRAM for everyone.
Steps to CRAM:
1. Connect to things your audience cares about: saving time, feeling good about themselves, feeling powerful, etc.
2. Identify and offer a compelling reward for taking action. Remember, good rewards are immediate, personal, credible and reflective of audience values.
3. Have a clear call to action. Good actions are specific, feasible and filmable (in other words, easy to visualize doing). They should also measurably advance our mission.
4. Make it memorable. We don’t want simply to make an impression; we want to make a lasting impression. What makes something memorable? It’s memorable if it’s different, catchy, personal, tangible and desirable. But a word of caution: memorable elements should always be closely tied to our cause. Think of all the advertisements that were so funny or memorable that we told a friend about them, but when asked what product the ad was for, we were not sure. We don’t just need a memorable idea or picture; we need an idea or picture that makes our cause memorable.
Remember the “A” message in yesterday’s review of fundraising letters?
“Dear Friends, Let us help make your holiday shopping the best experience ever by choosing the gift that keeps on giving! Celebrate the holiday season by giving hope, mobility and freedom to someone who has none. You will change the life of a child, teen or adult with a physical disability, as well as the lives of every member of their family, with a $75 gift to the Wheelchair Foundation to sponsor a brand new wheelchair.”
Nice CRAMing because:
1. Connection to my desire to making holiday shopping and giving feel good
2. Rewards: Feeling good about myself right now by helping someone have a better life
3. Action: Give $75 and get a wheelchair for someone
4. Memorable? The letter came with a four-color flier with a smiling, happy photo of a girl in a wheelchair
Posted by katya on Wed, December 13, 2006
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