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.
Fundraising is not about what you need. Really. It is about what the donor – through you – can achieve. It’s about giving donors the gift of knowing they changed the world for the better. It’s not about our goals – it’s about our donor’s aims.
Everyone knows you need money. So do the other 1.8 million nonprofits in the United States – as well as the millions more around the world. If that’s all you’ve got to say, you are just another organization with yet another appeal.
What is special about you? The answer can’t simply be that your programs need support. It must be that with your donor, you can together achieve a difference that no one else can.
The biggest thing that needs to change this year is how we think about our donors. We are in the midst of an enormous generational shift that has major implications for our work. The Greatest Generation of older, civic-minded Americans who wrote checks out of a sense of duty and expected little more than a tax receipt in return is passing the torch to a far more demanding series of successors.
Boomers expect a sense of impact, and younger donors expect engagement and involvement. They are anything but passive. Think of it this way. Just as in marketing we have left the broadcast era where consumers passively take in promotional messages, we have left the low-expectation donor era.
That means it’s not enough to declare a need and send a thank-you. Today’s supporters increasingly expect engagement that makes them feel seen, heard and involved. They are not walking wallets or ATM machines. They are partners who expect a relationship with the organizations they support. They want to be talked to as individuals, thanked and updated.
This is especially true online. With most of what we do online – Facebook, Foursquare, gaming, etc. - being highly personal and extremely interactive, we have to provide a more intimate and involved experience for our supporters with our technological tools. Otherwise, you will alienate nearly everyone.
That means we have to completely reorganize not only our approach but also how our organizations are structured. We need to tear down the walls of our organizations’ technology, marketing, fundraising and communications departments and rebuild the organization of our people in a way that creates a completely supporter-centric experience. A supporter is a real person, not a volunteer vs. an online donor vs. an offline donor, and she expects to be treated as such.
If a complete reorganization is impossible, then at least consider how to reorganize your fundraising efforts with a focus on what a prospective supporter or donor experiences at each touch point with your organization. If you aren’t sure, role play. Have a Be Your Donor Day. Go to your website. As the donor, ask yourself: Is it apparent what your organization does? Do you see something that forges an emotional connection? Are there tools to share what you are seeing via social networks, right on the home page? Are the voices of donors and supporters clear in the content? Does the website feel like a community or a brochure?
Keep going. Donate online and offline. How and when are you thanked? What happens after that? Call your 800 number. Sign up for e-News. Tweet your support. What happens?
We in the nonprofit marketing world spend a lot of time planning and holding events. We should spend an equal amount of time assessing the mountain of data they generate - and using that information to inform our future strategies. More measuring to learn and plan, please!
That’s the point made in a new eBook sent to me by Jono Smith of Event360 (and formerly of Network for Good - we miss you, Jono!). It’s called Analyze This: A Nonprofit’s Guide to Event Fundraising Analytics. You can download your free copy here.
This 18-page guide is designed to help event fundraisers move beyond only reporting the past and start using analytics to predict the future. A case study featuring the Komen Global Race for the Cure highlights how analytics helped formulate the steps the organization took to transform their highly attended event into a strong fundraising event.
For example, the guide explains that if you are struggling to build a reliable analytics program, start by looking at these key questions:
• What metrics are most important to your nonprofit?
• How does event fundraising impact those metrics?
• What are you currently measuring?
• How can you change those to take advantage of more information for more insight?
• What decisions will you make as a result of those metrics?
• What behavioral change is required?
I urge you to read it, because as I explained in my last post, knowing what worked and learning from what worked should be an approach we take much more often. Seriously.
I had such a nice comment in my last post from Jim Lord. He spoke of the importance of focusing on peaks not valleys.
I’d like to push that concept a step further and talk about positive deviance.
In my book I wrote about Jerry Sternin from Save the Children, whom I had the honor to meet years ago when I lived in Cambodia. Sternin approached problems in a truly innovative way: Rather than focusing on what was wrong in neighboring Vietnam, he decided to look for solutions to change that already existed in communities. He called it “positive deviance,” and it had a huge role in improving childhood health in Vietnam. Instead of spending all his time focusing on the problem of undernourished children, he visited children that were not undernourished and watched closely what their mothers did differently. Then he had these women teach their solutions to other mothers. They were things like adding sweet potato greens to a lunch of rice. In their new book Switch, Dan and Chip Heath tell this story in great detail (and better than I did!), calling this approach “bright spots.”
They write:
You may not fight malnutrition. But if you’re trying to change things, there are going to be bright spots in your field of view, and if you learn to recognize them and understand them, you will solve one of the fundamental mysteries of change: What, exactly, needs to be done differently?
...We need to switch from archaeological problem solving to bright-spot evangelizing. There’s no question that it’s possible to do. Take Jerry Sternin. He came into an environment riddled with failure. The opportunities for analysis were endless. He could have stayed in Vietnam for twenty years, writing position papers on the malnutrition problem. But what he knew was this: Even in failure there is success… These flashes of success - these bright spots - can illuminate the road map for action and spark the hope that change is possible.
Amen.
Try it. Instead of asking yourself why giving is down, look at which donors gave more this year and find out why. Instead of looking at why an email flopped, look at your last email that performed really well and discover what made it a winner. Instead of asking people in your program why they are failing at times, ask them about when they are succeeding and why.
Spend more time on duplicating what works rather than dwelling on what is broken.
Before I get to the great entrants, a quick thanks to about.com and Joanne Fritz for sponsoring the carnival. And in case you’re waiting for me to start selling you cotton candy and funnel cakes, I should explain the carnival is simply a monthly roundup of themed blog posts hosted by various bloggers in the nonprofit world. (What’s a carnival?)
Kivi Leroux Miller of NonprofitMarketingGuide has this wonderful post on a low point in a nonprofit job that led to her current incredible career as a thought leader and consultant. I am a fan and friend of Kivi, and I’ve got to tell you, that low was a real gift to all of us who now benefit from her wisdom. ( I should also add Network for Good - where I am COO - regularly turns to her as a consultant, too.)
She has such good advice:
Don’t stay in a job you hate, especially in the nonprofit world, where you have so many opportunities to do work you truly love. When you see people keeping secrets from or gossiping about other staff and board members, either shine a bright light on the situation or get out fast. Change is always hard, but in my experience, it’s nearly always good.
Like Kivi, Jeff Brooks is one of my favorite bloggers and thinkers. You should read his Future Fundraising Now blog regularly. (I should add Network for Good also uses Jeff as a consultant. I know there’s a pattern here but what can I say, I like to have smart people on our team!)
Jeff writes about a fabulous fundraising piece that fell flat. And he has some terrific counsel for all of us:
Turns out you can’t just raise funds for anything you want. If you go to your donors with an offer they don’t associate you with, they just might ignore you in droves. No matter how great your work is.
Charitable giving is complex. It works when a lot of factors all come together. When you change one or more of those factors—like talk to donors about something they don’t feel signed on to support—you can actually lose money in direct mail.
This is a wonderful post from Jake’s Grant Writing Confidential blog, which was new to me but now on my must-read list. If you’re not familiar, you must check it out.
Jake has great stories from toiling in the grant salt mines for over 16 years, a few of which he shares with us. I love this post, which describes how zeal can derail your chances of getting a grant.
My favorite part of the post is:
It’s pretty tough to keep a nonprofit going on bratwurst, car washes, and hope. You’re not going to reach as many people if you don’t have the organizational capacity to do so. Put aside your passion long enough to write proposals that are aimed at the funder’s guidelines, not your parochial view of the universe.
And that’s the truth.
Thanks Kivi, Jeff and Jake.
Last, I’d like to add one of my lows that also turned into a high.
A couple of years ago, I led a session on fundraising at a major conference. Midway through the presentation, I described Network for Good to the more than 100 nonprofit professionals in the audience. A man in the middle of the room raised his hand.
“I have a DonateNow button from you,” he said. “But it doesn’t work.”
It was a dark moment for a staff member from Network for Good. A real low.
So I said to the man – and everyone else in the room - that I was anxious to fix the problem and would get to the bottom of why people could not make donations from his website as soon as I finished my speech.
“No, that’s not the problem,” the man responded. “You can make a donation. The problem is, no one is clicking on the button.”
Ah.
The story of the “broken” button was an incredible epiphany for me. I realized that in my work to help nonprofits with online giving, I was assuming that giving them Network for Good’s functionality was enough. It wasn’t, which made me a failure at our mission of getting more resources to nonprofits online. There are limits to technology. You can have a huge donate button on your home page – or a snazzy Facebook page – but that does not mean anyone is coming or clicking. A DonateNow button is not magic and social networks aren’t money machines. You need great messaging and marketing to make effective use of these tools.
If your organization made a video in 2009, now is the time to enter the 4th Annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards, presented by See3 Communications and YouTube! The contest will award a total of $10,000 in grants, funded by the Case Foundation, to the best videos of the year found in the YouTube Nonprofit Program—a special program that YouTube designed to help nonprofits achieve their missions.
Submit any video your organization made last year by March 19, when a set of nonprofit and media professionals will select 16 finalists to compete in a public vote among the YouTube community. Awards will go to organizations of all sizes, including a special award for Best Innovation in Video.
Now is your chance to get your nonprofit video featured on the YouTube homepage, receive great prizes from Flip Video and Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN), and have your work showcased at a screening in Washington DC, hosted by Nomadsland.
Winners will be announced on April 10 at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in Atlanta.
This is the title of a new eBook I just finished with Alia McKee and Mark Rovner of Sea Change Strategies. It’s a guide to behavioral economics for nonprofit leaders and in here is why you should be reading it: You will be seeing behavioral economics everywhere this year. It’s the topic of a slew of business books - and it should be the topic on the minds of everyone in nonprofit marketing and fundraising, too.
As we explain in the eBook, behavioral economics challenges the notion that people will choose the best action or the most logically presented choice and explores the bounds of rationality — identifying social, cognitive and emotional factors that can influence the decisions people make. The big takeaway? People don’t arrive at most decisions through a process of weighing costs against benefits. We are irrational. In their book Nudge, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein put it simply: Real people make decisions like Homer Simpson, not Spock.
So why is behavioral economics important to nonprofit organizations? For us, these irrational decisions have high stakes. We’re not asking people to buy a Coke. We’re asking them to protect our environment, to safeguard our children, to fight for human rights. We’re asking them to change the world. Their individual decisions — which often don’t take into account one’s own best interest let alone the interest of the greater good — matter a lot. We need to be sure we’re asking people in the right way, or their Homer brains might undo our Spock arguments.
That’s the question Lucy Bernholz answers with her Blueprint 2010. This is the first in what will be a independent annual industry analysis for philanthropy and social investing. Lucy describes how 2010 will be another tough year for nonprofits - but likely a growth year for alternatively structured organizations that pursue the common good - like L3cs and B Corporations. Nonprofits no longer have the corner on social good. For-profits, social enterprises and other hybrid organizations will be active in the work of social impact as well - and on a bigger scale than ever before.
Earlier this week, I got to hear Lucy present on what all this will mean beyond 2010.
Some fascinating trends she highlighted were:
1. Data is the new platform for change. There is an expectation that nonprofits should provide more data about their activities and impact to the public - and that government and others also open up their data to the public. Transparency and impact are the new black, folks. (NB: That said, individual donors have limited interest in the data.)
2. Self-organizing groups using free technology will increasingly challenge institutional monopolies on social change. When anyone can put together a cause-related effort with relative ease, they are freed from working via nonprofits. We have to learn how to engage with these groups.
3. Anyone can act anytime, anywhere. In an era when we can volunteer from our iPhone or give with a click as part of any transaction, giving opportunities are becoming more and more pervasive and fragmented. Individual people can make a difference more than ever in more ways than ever. We need to figure out what this means to conventional fundraising and outreach.
4. Mobility matters: The ability of nonprofits to react to the digital world and manage channels like FourSquare and geotagging will separate the old school nonprofits from a new digital generation of organizations.
5. Forms matter: The conventional nonprofit is no longer the end all, be all of doing good. (See above comments on L3Cs and B corporations).
6. Global reach is a new standard: Technology is enabling organizations to scale globally in short order - just look at Kiva.org or Wikipedia. Are you an organization that should scale to the world?
The hard copy of Blueprint 2010 is $20 but you can get it on Kindle for half that cost. I should disclose Lucy has done consulting work for my organization and I’m a fan of her work.
As you know, HP emailed me to say they are giving away laptop and printer bundles as part of their Create Change program, which highlights how individuals and technology are creating change in the world. More on the campaign here.
I asked readers to write in comments one great, brief story about how technology helps you transform lives. I encouraged great storytelling skills. I said I’d pick the most moving story and HP would send that person a laptop and printer for the work of their nonprofit. Everyone else who posted gets copy of Switch (the one book to read if you’re trying to change the world) !
There was one story, though, that grabbed us all from the start and illustrated every principle of good storytelling. That was Vikki’s:
A local mom had her heart broken when her ex-husband did not return their two boys to her after a visitation last year.
Her life and soul was seemingly ripped from her when the two boys and their father were discovered in a remote wooded, snow-covered area - victims of a murder/suicide.
Shortly after that incident, our Domestic Violence shelter was in danger of being closed due to funding cuts, and we had implemented a fundraiser using Facebook Causes. Amy, the bereaved mom, was a “friend of a friend of friend”, and one of those friends had supported us through that cause. Amy, a Survivor, and her friends quickly utilized their Facebook accounts to spread the word that, without their help, Neville House was in danger of closing down, and this would eliminate all victim services for the whole of our county.
Amy’s request for people to donate reached the local newspaper, who ran a domestic violence theme for three days - including Amy’s appeal and the plight of the shelter.
I believe that it is as a direct result of this story running “through the wire” - from our website to Facebook to the local media - that our shelter is still operating. We have had to eliminate a staff position, and now need to replace funding that has been cut by a different source. but the victims of domestic violence in our county still can find shelter in their time of need, and can still access support services to enable them to become Survivors.
And everyone else gets a book! Just email me at katya dot andresen at sign networkforgood dot org with your address. I will be thrilled to send you an advance copy of this great book.
Here in Washington, DC, the city remains largely shut down, having just set a record for the snowiest winter EVER. I have to give a tip of the hat to the mail carriers who managed to show up a few times in the past week. Which takes my thoughts to direct mail. I rarely post on direct mail since I’m quite focused on online giving. That said, direct mail is still the source of most dollars in fundraising. So I wanted point you to a blogger that’s got some great resources on direct mail.
I especially like the following advice, which applies to donor cultivation via mail and online:
The first place to start in the conversion process is with a prompt “thank you.” The gold standard in promptness is to send a “thank you” within 24 hours of receipt of your gift. If at all practical, a hand-written or hand-signed note is best. Donors feel most appreciated if the CEO or Executive Director signs the “thank you.” It may seem like common sense, but a “thank you” should not ask for another gift or donation; to be accepted as a sincere “thank you,” the sole purpose of the communication need to be to express gratitude. Finally, if at all possible, the “thank you” should cite the amount of the gift given and provide a receipt for tax purposes.
A little while back, Kim Witman of the Wolf Trap Opera Company contacted me about helping with her virtual season launch. She asked to do a guest post. I thought this was a very innovative way to engage bloggers, so I’m featuring her here. I hope it inspires other arts organizations to think about how to drum up support in this down economy!
By Kim Witman
Thanks to Katya for letting me sit in the guest blogging seat today. As we create a mini-internet buzz on the occasion of our 2010 season announcement, I want to merge the topics closest to Katya’s heart: marketing and fundraising. They are inextricably linked in my home non-profit, the Wolf Trap Opera Company (an arm of the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts).
Why Blog?
The reasons I blog (and have since 2004) are not always directly linked to the benefits. My primary motivations for beginning to write were education and frustration.
Education, because I knew that a company with a young artist mission such as ours would be able to contribute to the developing careers of many more aspiring artists if we could get as much information as possible to a larger audience. So I began chronicling our annual nationwide audition tour, giving singers a better glimpse into what happens on our side of the table.
Frustration, because any of us who believe in our product and our cause know that if we could just get past the propaganda of mainstream marketing, we could spread that enthusiasm to others. And that is where the marketing and fundraising meet.
Wolf Trap Members & Priority Ticketing
Opera doesn’t turn a profit. That’s not a surprise, generally. But it’s not because we’re indiscriminately pouring money down some high-art pit. Chez nous, penny-pinching is something akin to an obsession. The vast vast majority of our budget goes to employ and further the careers of the roughly 100 artists, staff and crew who spend part or all of their summer at the Trap. The amount that we spend on resources other than human ones is a frighteningly low figure.
If you click through to my blog, and then to the pages on wolftrap.org (as I hope you will), you’ll find out that tickets don’t go on sale to the general public for about a month. Why the lag? Well, without Wolf Trap members, we simply would not exist. And as one way of thanking those who help us keep on going, if you donate, you get to jump to the front of the line to get tickets. It’s a pretty standard way of operating for NFP performing arts organizations, and it’s really not as prohibitive as you might think. (Here’s some math for you: Membership starts at a tax-deductible $65. That’s a net expense of about three nights’ parking fees at other venues.)
The Turk in Italy
We are committed to bringing variety and richness to our patron’s lives. This summer, Mozart brings us drama, Rossini provides some laughs, and Britten completely transports us into his unique dreamscape. And in the doing, the best of the next generation of performing artists refines their chops. Whether you’re an audience member, a fan, a donor, or all of the above, we appreciate your support. Our world needs many things, and music is one of them.
They emailed me to say they are giving away laptop and printer bundles as part of their Create Change program, which highlights how individuals and technology are creating change in the world. More on the campaign here.
So here’s the deal. Write in comments one great, brief story about how technology helps you transform lives. Use all those great storytelling skills. I’ll give you till Friday to post your comments. Then I’ll pick the most moving story and HP will send that person a laptop and printer. That’s it. Everyone else who posts gets copy of Switch (the one book to read if you’re trying to change the world) until my supply of 25 is gone. (Books sent in order of comments.) So you can’t lose. Either way, you get something to help you do more good.
I’ll confess it right here: I love a good makeover show. My daughters and I are avid fans of What Not to Wear. I also adore a good nonprofit website makeover, though they are harder to find than reruns of Stacy and Clinton steering women away from shapeless clothes. Most nonprofit websites are still at the “before” stage.
It is therefore with great excitement that I get to unveil a highly successful makeover from Project Hope. They took their website from dull to dynamic, meeting all the important requirements of a great site.
To be clear how I judge a site, I think a good home page should have the following:
1. Something that tugs the heartstrings - an arresting image, a bold statement, the start of an incredible story
2. A 2-second statement that sums up who you are and what you do so that anyone glancing at the page gets it right away
3. Clear, intuitive navigation that is organized according to the brain of the people who come to your website and NOT your org chart
4. A quick case or link to a case for why you’re THE organization to support
5. A way to capture people whose interest has been captured (a great email signup that entices people to provide their email address)
6. A big donate button for people ready to give
7. A third-party endorsement (ratings from Charity Navigator or a testimonial from someone)
8. Something that shows where the money goes or links to information on where donations go (this can be part of #4)
9. Engagement opportunities - lots of them!
10. Social media links - so people can take your message around the Internet
Let’s check out Project Hope BEFORE:
And after:
Here’s what Marisol from Project Hope told me:
We revamped our website in an effort to make it easier for our friends, donors and anyone seeking information on our international health education and humanitarian programs to navigate our website. The homepage also now allows easier access to our Facebook Fan and Cause page, and our Twitter and YouTube accounts. Also included in the new and improved website is an innovative tool to help us fundraise. Although Project HOPE is an older organization, founded in 1958, it continues to explore new ways to fundraise while raising awareness of our programs and mission. Now, from our website, fans and friends of Project HOPE have the ability to become an amateur fundraiser, by creating their own fundraising webpage, all underneath our brand. These fundraising pages are similar to the ones used by ActBlue during the 2008 elections. They allow the user to use the page to describe what Project HOPE means to them, highlight the causes that interest them the most and provide a quick and easy way for their friends and family to donate to HOPE.
I asked her what the results were and this is what she had to say: Website traffic is up (though some advertising on social media has increased the bounce rate). In addition, “Our new fundraising tool on the site that allows donors to create their own fundraising pages has raised nearly $16,000 in just a couple of weeks. The pages allow friends of HOPE to pick what focus or geographical region their donation should support.”
She wrote this before the Haiti disaster, so I’m sure the results have grown since then. [UPDATE: Marisol says: Project Hope is now over $53,000 raised through our personalized fundraising pages.]
I’m a fan of the big image, the instant understanding of what they do, the clear calls to action, the multiple ways to engage, the big donate link, and the clarity on what impact they have.
Great job, Project Hope! And thanks for your hard work for Haiti.
Posted by katya on Wed, March 10, 2010
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