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.

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.

M+R has released a new social benchmarks study: Get the study here or read a summary at frogloop.

If you do it right, fundraising is not a zero sum game. 

My wonderfully provacative blogger friend Eric Foley says we should stop looking at Haiti as a diversion from our own missions, and I could not agree more.

Read his whole post today, and especially note this good advice:

So if you are a nonprofit and you suspect your donations are down due to the Haiti disaster, what should you do?

He says (and I quote):

1. Don’t–just don’t–write your donors and draw comparisons between the disaster in Haiti and the disaster your cause addresses. Never ever contemplate writing a letter that says, “It is a terrible tragedy that 200,000 people may be dead in Haiti due to the earthquake, but did you know that that number pales in comparison to the number of people who will die this year because of [insert your cause here] unless we do something today?” Even if that approach doesn’t backfire on you, it should. The deaths of 200,000 human beings should never be invoked as a means to any end.

2. Do accept the drop in your donation income as a sign that one sows what one reaps. If one motivates one’s donors through a micro-disaster-of-the-month-club approach, one must accept that when a bigger disaster comes along, your micro-disaster will be trumped that month.

3. Commit to a fundraising approach that recognizes that donors can–and should–be giving to a comprehensive range of causes. Encourage that with more than lip service. Provide resources (like Alan Gotthardt’s Eternity Portfolio) that enable your donors to learn to grow in their giving maturity, not just in their gross giving to your cause.

4. Don’t focus on sharing the desperate needs of your organization with your donors. Organizational desperation doesn’t motivate donors any more; in fact, if they smell death, they will move on and away from you as discretely as possible. Instead, continue to provide donors with meaningful opportunities for involvement with the cause about which both you and they care. Settle in your own mind that people can and do (and should) care about more than one cause, and reaffirming the comparative importance of the one you’re involved in is far less important (and dignified) than continuing to provide customized, personalized opportunities for donors to build on the important work they’ve already begun with you.

5. Convey your genuine interest in Haiti by being genuinely knowledgeable about the subject and transparent in your own response to the disaster. (You did respond…didn’t you?) If you are comprehensively involved in a wide range of causes other than your own (which you should be), your care and compassion will come across as a whole lot more compelling than if you have no idea what’s going on in Haiti and didn’t respond to the disaster at all. The best picture your donors will ever get of being appropriately involved in more than one cause…is you.

For useful nonprofit tips about fundraising on a budget, check out this month’s carnival here, hosted by IssueLab. Thanks to about.com for sponsoring the carnival. (What’s a carnival?)

I am hosting next month! That means right here on my blog, I’ll be linking to any great posts on the topic: Highs and Lows: Share your stories of your best and/or worst moments as a nonprofit professional – and what you learned from them. I promise to share a low - embarrassing things are more entertaining.

If you want to be featured on my blog, submit your post entry by February 25th here.

Here is Network for Good’s data:

The Internet and mobile are ideally matched to charitable giving at times of disaster, when technology can turn the impulse to help into a donation within seconds.  But disaster giving online follows a “fast but fleeting” pattern. The
impulse effect typically spikes and drops within a short week-long timeframe.  And so it has been with Haiti.

It’s not news that attention spans are short or that interest in an issue declines with media coverage (both traditional and social).  Once something is off the headlines, it fades out of mind.

So what does a charity working in Haiti do? 

1. When attention is on the crisis and impulse is at a high, ask for a recurring gift - a monthly, automatic credit card donation.  It’s the gift that keeps on giving over the long months of recovery, even when it’s not top of mind. 

2. Thank the donors that gave often and report on the life-saving results of their dollars.  Donors lose interest when nonprofits do a lousy job showing the difference they’ve made.

3. Consider an anniversary campaign. Six months out or one year later, check in and thank your donors profusely.  Tell great stories about their impact.  Then ask them to consider a gift to rebuild.

”>

Why is this book so important? Let me tell you a story.

Last summer, I taught a class on marketing and strategic communications at American University for mid-career federal government professionals. In working together, it quickly became apparent to me that they needed more than marketing. From the FDA employee trying to talk to the public about generic drugs to the government purchasing agent trying to get other government departments to use her services, they didn’t just need to know the 4 Ps or how to craft a good message - they needed to learn how to change what people do. So instead of talking about messaging, I spent most of the course talking about behavior change.

Lucky for me, I had a nifty little resource - the first chapter of Switch, which Dan Heath had emailed to me. Without leaking his wonderful content, I tapped into his understanding of the human brain. I used this information to help my students not just say the right things - but to get people to do the right things. And I discovered that as a committed marketer of a good cause, you need these principles to fully achieve the change you seek.

Nonprofit marketing friends - all marketing friends: We need to be more than messengers. We need to be change agents. That takes more than marketing. It takes psychology, too.

A few weeks ago, I finally got the whole book, and it is fantastic.

Here’s the premise: It’s really hard to change organizations, communities, people and ourselves. We all know that. But why? Because of the way our brain works. We are literally of two minds: the rational mind and the emotional mind - that compete for control. As Dan writes, the rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie. Or as I think of it, the rational mind is the one that sets the alarm for 5 am when I go to bed so I can get up early to work on my novel before I leave for the office. The emotional mind is the one that hits snooze and puts a pillow over my head when morning comes. (Which is why I’m still only halfway through my novel, two years in.)

These two minds can doom efforts at compelling action and achieving change, but guess what? They can be overcome with three methods, used together. This principles apply not just to your personal resolutions - they apply to getting people in your office to adapt a new approach, to persuading people to eat healthy, to galvanizing people around actions that advance your cause.

The wonderful news is, these three steps are not gigantic. In fact, the solutions to your big problems are often small and simple when you approach them with a clear understanding of how people think. As the book notes,

Big problems are rarely solved with commensurately big solutions. Instead, they are most often solved by a sequence of small solutions, sometimes over weeks, sometimes over decades.

But change usually feels big and unweildy - like steering an elephant. Your rational mind is like the wee little driver perched atop this gigantic, emotional, recalcitrant beast. The Heath brothers’ three-part framework tells you how to get the elephant moving:

1. Direct the rider: Provide crystal-clear direction. You may think you’re encountering resistance when in fact you’re encountering confusion. This principle deeply resonated with me, because I believe so much of nonprofit work falls down over poor, unclear or overly complex calls to action. We tell people to stop global warming when we should ask them to switch light bulbs.

2. Motivate the elephant: Engage people’s emotional sides to they cooperate. Self-control is exhausting, and people need emotional energy to embrace and adopt change.

3. Shape the path: A “people” problem is often simply a situation problem. Put people in a different situation if you want them to change.

Want to hear more? Buy the book. Or write in this post’s comments section what you’re trying to change and I’ll send the first five commenters one of the galley proofs Dan donated to Network for Good. [Update: they’re all gone!]AND, by all means, listen to Dan speak! He has generously volunteered his time to do a presentation on the book in February as a Network for Good teleconference! This call will change your work (and maybe even your bad habits), so don’t miss it.

Register here for the call. It is free.

Enjoy!

(BTW, if the novel gets done, Dan gets some credit.)

Register here.

”>

Seth Godin has a new book out, and Linchpin has me thinking about my work, indispensable colleagues and how to be truly valuable to my cause in entirely new ways. It is the most motivating book I’ve read in a long while. And, in a nice bonus, it includes a picture of my colleague Charles Ball at Network for Good in the inside cover, where there is a hall of fame of linchpins.

As Seth Godin is gifted at doing, he puts his finger on some vital truths that we all may have sensed at certain moments but that haven’t been able to grap on a conscious level, articulate fully or act upon. If you are someone in a hurry to do good in this world, read this book because it will encourage you to pursue that goal in a way that makes a far bigger difference for you, your organization and the world. It will help you break out of the email inbox, the fear of failure and the spinning of wheels and galvanize you to pursue your genius instincts. In short, it’s a good kick in the butt and shot of bravery for the start of the new year.

Here are some key ideas from the book:

1. The people of greatest value in this economy and to your organization are linchpins. A linchpin is a person who walks into chaos, creates order and invents, connects, creates and makes things happen. People who work automatically, by rote and define what is and is not their job are disposable.

2. The “makes things happen” part of being a linchpin is critical. It’s not enough to be an artiste. Or a genius. You actually have to produce and deliver. The difference between a successful artist and a failed one is what happens after the idea is hatched. The difference is the race to completion. Don’t just be an idea person. Be an implement-the-idea-fast person. As Seth says (and I love this):

Wait! Are you saying that I have to be someone who dreams up new ideas AND makes them real? Someone who finds new ways to interact, new pathways to deliver emotion, new ways to connect? Someone who acts like a human, not a cog? Yes.

3. Do all of this in a generous way. Don’t be a linchpin with an eye toward getting but rather with a mindset of giving. Approach your work as if you were giving the gift of yourself each day. Approach your customers (or donors!) with gratitude in your heart rather than dollars signs in your eyes.

Number three is so important to our sector. Seth says there are three ways to think about gifts:

1) Give me a gift!
2) Here’s a gift. Now you owe me, big time.
3) Here’s a gift, I love you.

Stick to #3. It’s good for your career, it’s good for your organization and it’s good for the greater good.

Thank you, Seth, for reminding us of how important it is - especially for those of us working for good causes - to approach our work with vigor, rigor and generosity!

GET IT HERE.