Category: Uncategorized

What gets measured gets done!

Fundraising, Uncategorized

The turkey was no sooner packed away in its Tupperware containers and Americans were running out their front doors to cash-in on Black Friday sales and promotions. In fact, according to early projections, this Black Friday was a record-setting day with more cash finding its way into cash registers and more feet stampeding through the malls than ever before “on the same day”.

When I read this, the phrase that jumped out at me was: “over the same day last year”. It caught my attention because it was used in every article I read about this year’s Black Friday phenomenon. There was something that bothered me greatly about this phrase, and it wasn’t until my long drive home on Saturday and Sunday from my Thanksgiving travels that it finally dawned on me.

This phrase is powerful because it represents an industry’s commitment to measurement and benchmarking, and it isn’t a phrase that you hear many non-profit organizations using. Sure . . . you hear non-profit folks say things like “the campaign will exceed last year’s amount raised” or “event revenue is down compared to last year”. However, you almost never hear non-profit folks say things like:

Our agency’s philanthropic contributions are 6.1-percent higher than they were for the same period last year, which is perfectly in line with industry trends for non-profit’s our size.

While I am not sure why we don’t hear this more from our charity’s of choice, I am certain it isn’t because of a lack of information. I can confidently say this because at the bottom of my new website’s homepage I link to Blackbaud’s “Index of Charitable Giving”. This is one of the best things Blackbaud has ever done for the non-profit sector. The service is a broad-based fundraising index that reports total giving trends of 1,319 nonprofit organizations representing $2.3 billion in yearly giving on a monthly basis.

Here are just a few ideas that you might consider using this number to make your agency stronger:

  • Measure your fundraising performance against similar sized agencies. Share this comparative information with your resource development committee and use it to spark engaging conversations around “WHY”. You may be surprised where you end up.
  • Measure your fundraising performance against the same time period last year. Use this baseline data during your agency’s annual resource development planning efforts. It might spark engaging conversations and help make good adjustments to next year’s fundraising plan.
  • Use the benchmarking and baseline data during year-end reviews with agency staff who have resource development responsibilities (including non-profit CEOs). I guarantee board volunteers asking why the agency failed to keep pace with or greatly exceeded the industry’s pace during a year-end evaluation will spark engaging conversations.
  • Publish in your agency’s newsletters, website and impact reports how well your fundraising efforts did compared to other similar sized organizations compared to the same time last year. I guarantee that being transparent with this information will spark engaging conversations.

I can almost hear some folks saying that it doesn’t make sense to compare their agency with a national index because their community is so “unique” (kind of like a unicorn). To those of you whose minds are already there, I have two things to say:

  1. Poppycock!
  2. If you must have it your way, there is nothing stopping you from pulling a few non-profits in your “unique community” together and sharing data every quarter in the spirit of benchmarking and measurement.

It has been said by many different people over the centuries: “What gets measured, gets done!”

So, let me end by asking you: What are you measuring at your non-profit organization? Please use the comment box below to share what you’re measuring and how you are using that information. We can all learn from each other.

Here’s to your health!

Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

Being thankful!

Uncategorized

This Thanksgiving holiday season I am grateful to all of you who subscribe to this blog.

When I first started writing it a number of months ago, I set a goal of reaching 100 subscribers by the end of 2011. I am thrilled to inform you that our little online community currently sits at 124 and counting. The next goal is to figure out how to expand our little non-profit online community to 300 subscribers by the end of 2012.

As is the case with your special events and annual campaign fundraisers, you don’t increase the number of donors by hoping more new prospects spontaneously show up at your door with checks in hand. Hope is never a strategy!

So, I am asking for your help this holiday season. If you know of someone who works or volunteers for a non-profit organization and is committed to life-long learning, please forward a copy of one of my blog posts along to them and encourage them to subscribe. As you know, it is FREE and can be done by simplying typing an email address into the subscriptions widget in the upper right corner of my blog. After doing that, they need to verify they did it by clicking the link that is emailed to them by WordPress.

As you know, I write this blog because I believe in my heart we can all learn from each other. So, it stands to reason that the more people who join our little online community, the more collective knowledge we’ll have access to, which means we can increase our learning capacity exponentially.

Please know that I am thankful for your willingness to engage in a discussion about donors, fundraising, resource development and non-profits in general. Thank you! Enjoy the turkey today. And as always, here is to your health!

Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

Does your non-profit have a soul?

Uncategorized

A few weeks ago I facilitated a values exercise for an organization that is in the process of trying to build a powerful and functional new team. After the exercise (which was contentious but very productive), some of the feedback I received from participants as well as others is that a values discussion is just one big waste of time.

I made a conscious decision to hear thes folks and not respond immediately. I wanted to marinade on it for a few weeks. Well, I’m done soaking and I am ready to confidently say “Organizational values are NOT a joke!”

Don’t believe me? You don’t have to . . . just listen to Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner who stated the following in their book “The Leadership Challenge“:

“Shared values make an enormous difference to organizational and personal vitality. Research confirms that firms with strong corporate culture based on a foundation of shared values outperform other firms by a huge margin. Their revenue grew 4-times fast; their rate of job creation was 7-times higher; their stock price grew 12-times faster; and their profit performance was 750-percent higher.”

Before your non-profit organization can craft of vision of who it wants to be, it must address the values questions. The reasons for this are well laid out in Stephen Fairley and Bill Zipp’s book “The Business Coaching Toolkit“. Here are three reasons they believe this to be true:

  1. Values give your people a cause to life for instead of just a job to do.
  2. Values give your associates principles to apply instead of just policies to enforce.
  3. Values produce leaders with relational authority and not just positional authority.

Still don’t believe me?  OK . . . think about a time that you weren’t living your life in alignment with your personal values. For example, you might value something like “balance” because your family is very important to you, but the demands on your time at work forces you to make decisions that don’t allow for “balance” in your life. How does living out of alignment with your values make you feel? I suspect there is tension and pressure.

Now take this example and extrapolate it to the people you work with, the donors who contribute to you, and the board volunteers who serve selflessly with you.

As part of your organization’s next strategic planning initiative, I encourage you to start with mission-focus and before you transition to talk about “organizational vision” facilitate a collaborative discussion with all stakeholder groups around organizational values.

I promise you won’t be disappointed. You will find that your organizational values act as a catalyst for all kinds of things and refocuses your hiring decisions, recruitment decisions and can even affect how you solicit and steward donors.

Does your organization have values? Are they real or just something plastic? How do you see your agency using its values? When they developed those values did they include donors in that discussion? Please use the comment box to share your thoughts. We can all learn from each other.

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

Why are non-profits adverse to executive coaching?

Uncategorized

The for-profit sector discovered long ago the value of executive coaching. There have been studies that show coaching boosts job performance. There are studies that show coaching increases company profitability. There are still more studies that show coaching increases competitiveness and helps with leadership development and succession planning.

So, why is it that so many non-profit organizations seem to be reluctant to invest in executive coaching for their employees?

My first knee jerk reaction to this is to simply say most non-profit agencies are under-resourced and unable to pay for those kinds of services. However, I think I’ve recently changed my mind after attending a conference as an exhibitor. As with most exhibitor booths, I ran a fish bowl giveaway in an attempt to capture people’s business cards. At the end of the day, I pulled two names and gave away from FREE coaching services. As you can probably guess, I haven’t received a phone call from either individual. So, can the answer be as simple as money?

After spending more time contemplating why non-profit organizations seem to be reluctant to invest in executive coaching, I think I’ve come up with a different answer . . .

Non-profit leaders don’t truly understand the idea of “return on investment” (ROI).

For all the recent talk about ROI in non-profit circles when it comes to measuring outcomes and stewarding donors, this idea originates from the for-profit sector and is a relative newcomer to non-profit circles. So, quoting a study that shows coaching yields a ROI 5- to 7-times the initial investment gets quizzical looks from many non-profit leaders who I know. This response improves only slightly when you’re able to quantify the dollars and sense like Fortune magazine did in this quote:

“Business coaching is attracting America’s top CEOs because, put simply, business coaching works. In fact, when asked for a conservative estimate of monetary payoff from the coaching they got… managers described an average return of more than $100,000, or about six times what the coaching had cost their companies.”

I suspect that executive coaching won’t been seen by board volunteers as a viable performance enhancement tool until we start talking differently about it and point to improved job satisfaction and employee retention.

I also suspect that executive directors won’t start looking at executive coaching for their fundraising professionals until we start pointing to how little time non-profit CEOs seem to have and how that results in minimal time spent coaching resource development professionals.

I don’t know . . . I can be talked off the ledge. Please take a moment and use the comment box below to share your thoughts.

Has your agency used executive coaching services? Has it be beneficial? Did you measure ROI? If so, what was the return? If your agency doesn’t use coaching services, what do you suspect the reasoning is?

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847|
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

The case for transparency and non-profit salaries

Uncategorized

The President of the United States makes $400,000 per year not including benefits. A member of the Illinois House of Representatives earns $67,836 per year in addition to receiving a $132 per diem for every day they are in session. The CEO of Fifth-Third Bancorp earns $3,144,823 per year and has another $1,572,411 in restricted stock awards and $40,779 in other compensation.

Dale Lonis is the Executive Director of the Elgin Symphony Orchestra (ESO) in my hometown of Elgin, Illinois.  According to his agency’s 2009 990 tax return, his 2009 salary was $122,850 and his benefits package was valued at $8,594.

OK . . . I can hear many of you wondering why is it necessary to post this kind of information. After all, many of us learned at a very early age that talking about money-related topics is taboo in polite society. Well, the reason why a segment of our society has fought so hard for transparency in government, publicly traded corporations, and non-profits is as simple as this:

Those who make a living with ‘other people’s money’ should be held to a higher standard.

Still not sure you agree? Please consider the following:

  • Public servants are paid by “We The People” and we’re entitled to know what they are paying themselves to do “the people’s business”.
  • Publicly traded corporations owe “the market” accurate information about how they transact business because without that information we end up with situations like ENRON, MCI WorldCom, and Tyco. When companies ask for public investment and act in less-than-transparent ways, people can’t make smart investment decisions . . . the free market fails to work efficiently . . . people unfairly lose money.

Can’t the same be said for non-profit organizations? Aren’t donors trying to make wise investment decisions with their charitable dollars? How many donors are happy when they learn their charitable contributions were misused by a nonprofit organization? I suspect that no one is every happy when that happens, which begs the question about the need for increased transparency in this sector. Doesn’t it?

Let’s circle back to the Elgin Symphony Orchestra and look at the facts (which I simply gathered from the organization’s 990 tax return):

  • The board made a decision to pay their executive director $122,850 in 2009
  • This agency brought in $2.5 million in revenue in 2009
    • $696,179 in membership dues
    • $162,269 in government grants
    • $642,528 in direct contributions from donors
    • $1,026,023 in ticket sales
    • $22,000 in program book advertising
    • $19,848 in performance fees
  • This organization didn’t “balance its books” and ended 2008 with a deficit of $471,214 and ended 2009 with a deficit of $322,616

Thanks to laws that require non-profit tax forms to be public information and websites like guidestar.org that publish 990 tax forms, donors are able to easily secure this information and make wise investment decisions. Even though the aforementioned information is just a small slice of what you can pull from an organization’s 990 form, a donor can make a number of judgement calls from it. For example, a donor can weigh how they feel about:

  • this agency’s revenue model (fees vs. fundraising)
  • this agency’s fiscal health
  • this board’s track record with key management decisions around budgeting, executive compensation, business model, etc

Disclaimer . . . I am not suggesting that Dale Lonis is being overpaid (in fact, I would guess it is in line with similar sized organizations in similar communities). I am also not suggesting that the board has made any poor decisions. I will leave all those judgements for each individual reader of this blog. All I am trying to do is make the case for the value of transparency in the non-profit sector.

Do you still think I am off-base? You may want to check-out what is happening in New York’s non-profit community. You might also want to look at what frogloop blog says about a Guidestar study that illustrates how little transparency exists in the non-profit sector.

I started this discussion with yesterday’s blog post by invited you to weigh-in with your thoughts and start a dialog about non-profit executive compensation and transparency.

Do donors deserve this kind of information? If not, then how can they make informed charitable giving decisions and how can they hold agency’s accountable for they promised during the solicitation call? What is your organization doing to become more transparent? Where are yours thoughts on transparency with executive compensation? Do you think a non-profit organization should be required to put its annual 990 tax form on file at your local library or on their website? Is the 990 form too obtuse? Does a non-profit need to be required to publish a small handful of key organization metrics on their website?

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847|
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

The Great Oz, Community Impact, and Snake Oil

Uncategorized

I’ll never forget the day after watching “The Wizard of Oz” for the umpteenth time that I finally realized that the Wizard character was a snake oil salesman. He could sell ice to Eskimos, and he indeed sold the Tim Man, the Cowardly Lion, and the Scarecrow exactly what they wanted in this final scene of the movie. It is exactly for this reason that I believe non-profit organizations need to hire the “Great and Powerful Oz” to sell donors on the idea of “community impact”.

In the nonprofit community, everyone is going nuts over this idea. We need to “measure our impact” so we can demonstrate to stakeholders and donors that change is being made. Even I have gotten wrapped up in this Kansas tornado from time-to-time on this blog. Please don’t misunderstand. I firmly believe that every non-profit organization needs to create an impact agenda, measurement tools, and indicators. How else can they ever be sure that they are fulfilling their mission?

However, what I am starting to worry about is how carried away everyone seems to be getting with this idea. It gets bigger and bigger with every passing day. Here is the progression that I’ve seen recently with one national non-profit whose mission focuses on helping kids reach their full potential by offering after-school programming:

  • It started a few decades ago with a program focused on helping kids do better on their homework. Impact conversations focused around the simple idea of “are they doing better with their homework assignments now compared to before they started participating in the homework assistance program?”
  • It then morphed to High Yield Learning Activities (aka fun games with educational objectives like Math Bingo). Impact conversations evolved and started involving the idea of designing and implementing a pre- and post-test strategy to actually measure change and improvement.
  • The conversation then quickly jumped to “collecting report cards” and claiming credit for kids who participate in these after-school program and who also seem to be maintaining or improving their grades in school.
  • Today, the impact conversation is now focused on three HUGE “priority outcomes,” one of which is for their clients to “graduate from high school ready for college, trade school, military or employment”.

Again . . . you will get no argument from me that an impact agenda and outcomes measurement are important. However, at what point does it get too big and impossible to measure? At what point are we selling snake oil to donors and supporters just like the Wizard of Oz did?

There is NO WAY one non-profit organization can guarantee that even one of their clients will do better in school or even graduate all because that child walked into their facility and participated in their programs. When non-profits set an impact agenda that is wide enough to fly the space shuttle through it, then they set themselves up to be exposed. Just like the Wizard of Oz did in this YouTube clip.

The reality is that it takes one huge massive collaboration and partnership of many different non-profit organizations, schools, teachers, parents, and even taxpayers to all be pulling in the same direction if you want to achieve an impact like: “graduate X% of kids from high school who are ready for college, trade school, military or employment”.

There are so many variables that go into these HUGE impact agenda outcomes that I begin to wonder if funding one non-profit organization or one school district to do one small program with one small subset of kids makes any sense? Is it the right strategy? Or should non-profits and schools and parents and teachers be financially incented by donors to “collaborate”?

I am not smart enough to know what that looks like . . . however, I know when a dialog needs to be opened and I suspect it is this subject at this point in time.

I applaud the United Way for tackling this issue because impact assessment is the right thing for non-profits to be doing and talking with donors about. However, who is going to step in and moderate this discussion because this path feels too big and too wide for the average size agency to walk down. Perhaps, it will be the United Way that finds its voice and leads everyone down the yellow brick road to a collaboration-based solution rather than focusing on individual programs.

Is your nonprofit in the impact agenda and outcomes measurement business? What is working for you? What isn’t working? Are you honestly measuring things that demonstrate your success around mission? If so, how? Is there another road for the United Way to go down rather than funding odds and ends programs and claiming that this approach is helping close major gaps in our communities (e.g. academic failure, homelessness, joblessness, health care, etc)?

I’ve heard too many people in the last few months complain behind closed doors about this subject. It is time to bring the discussion into the open because we can learn from each other. Why not use the comment box below to start the conversation?

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson
Founder & President, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
www.thehealthynonprofit.com
erik@thehealthynonprofit.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847|
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

Fundraising volunteers speak out: Wrap-up

Fundraising, Uncategorized

For the last four days, we’ve heard unfiltered responses from real, live fundraising volunteers with regard to what they see as past successes and what it will take to keep them involved next year. So, the question now shifts to: “What are you going to do about it?”

I’ve had an opportunity to soak-up this week’s blog series, and here are a few ideas if you want to make this input/feedback actionable:

  • Organize a focus group of fundraising volunteers and ask their opinions on what needs to change in order for your resource development program to take the next step.
  • Identify former fundraising volunteers who used to help your organization but have since stopped. Call them, invite them out for coffee, and just listen (don’t ask for a thing).
  • Develop volunteer job descriptions for all of your fundraising volunteer positions and use them in 2012 . . . no more “soft selling” people . . . set realistic expectations from the beginning.
  • Commit yourself to sending out agendas and meeting materials to all fundraising volunteers at least 7 days before every meeting.
  • Figure out how to infuse a sense of “mission-focus” into every single meeting where fundraising volunteers are present.
  • Revisit your organizations “prospect assignment” practices and ask volunteers to weigh-in with suggestions on how to improve it . . . ensuring that volunteers are matched with prospects they feel confident soliciting.

OK … I’ve got the ball rolling with a few simple ideas. Now it is your turn! What are you planning to do to make this week’s blog series actionable so that your organization can become more donor-centered? Please use the comment box below to share your ideas because we can all learn from each other.

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson
Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
eanderson847@gmail.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

ePhilanthropy: Mission Possible

Uncategorized

Last week, I dedicated the entire week’s worth of blog posts to exploring ePhilanthropy related topics. However, I still have a few thoughts that slopped over into this week. Today, I wrap-up this ePhilanthropy series by looking at how non-profits (especially under-resourced organizations) might begin preparing for the future.

Executive directors and resource development professionals don’t need to walk down this road alone. There are people who serve on your board of directors who work in the for-profit sector and are light years ahead of us when it comes to e-commerce. Additionally, there are so many people who are tech enthusiasts in your community who would love to volunteer for you just so they can play some more with technology.

The first step for any organization is to recruit people and build a team to help you. I don’t think you should make this a committee of only tech-minded people. Try to recruit volunteers who have the following skill sets: 1) technology acumen or curiosity, 2) an understanding of and love for your mission, 3) a personal track record of donating to other charities online, and 4) some basic understanding of how resource development works (or a willingness to learn).

It is always a best practice for a committee or work group to collaborating on creating a written “annual work plan” before rolling up their sleeves and getting to work.  For this particular group, I suggest the work plan for Year One of this project involve the following discussion items:

  • Review and recommend to the board of directors that they adopt Network for Good’s ePhilanthropy Code of Ethics.
  • Evaluate your website and make sure your evaluation process includes asking donors to weigh-in on content and functionality.
  • Make a plan for redesigning your website and incorporate action items that transition your site from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 (include installing and using data analytics ). If you have the capacity to start implementing your plan in Year One, then charge down that road gleefully. Try to include a blog (one that you use weekly) and video to tell your organization’s story to online donors.
  • Look at your email house file and how your organization encourages supporters to provide their contact info. Make a plan with measurable goals for increasing the number of emails in your database and put it into action. (See yesterday’s blog about email)
  • Create a simple e-newsletter that drives readers back to your website by encouraging them to “click-through” using html hyperlinks. Make sure you’ve purchased an email service provider and use it to distribute your e-newsletter. Also make sure that you are using the built-in data analytics that come with these services. Experiment with different things and see what results in better traffic. (Remember: this means that your website content needs to be updated regularly)
  • Make a plan for social media that includes Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It should answer the simple question of how you plan on using each platform and which target audience you hope to speak to. The plan also needs to address how you plan on building an “online following” as well as what content is shared (how often and by whom). Above all, it needs to look at the idea of creating an “online conversation” with target audiences. This isn’t just about shouting marketing and fundraising messages into cyberspace.

Phew … that probably seems like a lot of stuff to accomplish in Year One for some organizations. If so, no problem … break some of these initial work plan items into multiple years. Walt Disney summed it up best when he said, “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” It doesn’t matter how slow or fast you move. The important thing is that you start moving!

Keep in mind that engaging your donors (via surveys, interviews, focus groups, recruitment to the committee, etc) is a great way to be “donor-centered” and ensure that your ePhilanthropy plans will meet their needs.

So, what is your organization doing to position itself for ePhilanthropy? Have you learned any lessons? If so, please share using the comment box below. We can all learn from each other.

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson
Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
eanderson847@gmail.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

Email is tricky. Period!

Uncategorized

Sorry about the earlier accidental blog post. What can I say about my fat fingers and mis-clicks? LOL

Last week, I dedicated the entire week’s worth of blog posts to exploring ePhilanthropy related topics. Needless to say, I still have a few thoughts I couldn’t squeeze into last week. Today, I turn my attention to email and tomorrow I will try to wrap everything up into a nice package before moving onto new topics.

So, how do you use email and what are some challenges you’re experiencing?

For those of you who know me, you know that I tend to misuse email and sometimes send something that looks more like a novel or manafesto. The reality is that many organizations make the same mistake with their e-newsletters. I’ve seen too many e-newsletters that simply look like an electronic version of their snail-mail cousin.

What I  recently learned as part of an ePhilanthropy pilot project was that your e-newsletter will be most effective if the following occurs:

  • Use more white space and pictures than you do words.
  • Design your e-newsletter so that the reader doesn’t need to use the scroll bars (at least not much).
  • Keep the e-newletter to two or three major stories. Make sure your donor-focused e-newsletters has stories that demonstrate your program effectiveness and community impact. Try to have a story that serves as a “call-to-action” for volunteers and donors.
  • Keep each story to two or three short sentences with hyperlinks that jumps them to a page on your website to read about the details.
  • Use an email service provider to avoid getting blacklisted by your donors’ Internet Service Providers (ISP) as a spammer. Check-out Emma or Constant Contact.

Non-profits are using email for EVERYTHING such as: prospect cultivation, donor solicitation, donor stewardship, board communications, marketing, and much more. The challenge is that the email channel’s effectiveness is degrading quicker than the snail-mail channel did. Don’t believe me? Think about the last time you opened your email inbox … was there a lot of “click, click, click … delete, delete, delete” going on? Or did you have problems downloading an html email? And what about the newest trend where we’re all reading our email on our smart phones? UGH!

And another problem non-profit organizations seem to wrestle with is the process of collecting email addresses. Penelope Burk reported in her book “Donor-Centered Fundraising” that “47-percent of non-profit do not communicate with their donors via email.” She shared that the biggest reason was not having donors’ email addresses.  Click here for some great suggestions on getting better at collecting email addresses.

We all need to get better at using best practices if our organizations are going to succeed in this new ePhilanthropy environment. The trick is staying up-to-date on the ever changing best practices environment . As I said on Friday, I suggest frequently visiting Network for Good’s online learning center website. Click here to see all sorts of resources pertaining to email.

OMG … I can write an entire week about email, but I will stop here. Please jump into the discussion and share some of the best practices you find most valuable. How do you know when your organization is over-using email and what have you done about it? Are you integrating email into your marketing and fundraising efforts? If so, how? Are you using email analytics to track your open-rate and click-through rates? What are you finding? We can learn from each other!

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson
Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
eanderson847@gmail.com
http://twitter.com/#!/eanderson847
http://www.facebook.com/eanderson847
http://www.linkedin.com/in/erikanderson847

Hooking fish but not landing them

Uncategorized

I am dedicating this week’s blog posts to exploring ePhilanthropy related topics. Since this field of resource development is still cutting edge (or should I say bleeding edge), I encourage everyone who is dabbling, experimenting and playing with tools in this field to please weigh-in using the comment section of this blog. Today, I turn my attention to websites.

Well, here we are … back at square one — “The Beginning”. I can imagine that this entire ePhilanthropy thing started a long time ago at the start of the digital revolution when one resource development professional asked themselves: “Hmmm … my donors online are all hanging out online. I wonder how I can using my agency’s website to raise money?”

So, talking about websites seems like a very anti-climatic way to end the week. Right?

If you responded in the affirmative, then I beg to differ because the issue with ePhilanthropy is how quickly technology changes. In my opinion, there is a real danger is in forgetting about one of the most basic building blocks (e.g. website) and getting distracted by the new shiny objects (social media, online videos, etc).

Still skeptical? Think of it this way … your organization’s website is like “home base” for your entire ePhilanthropy program. Your social media, online video and email strategies are like a “fishing pole, line and hook” is to a fisherman.

Let’s take an example from my blog post yesterday about online videos. I posted a YouTube link to an online video solicitation from Chris Salvatore on behalf of the Gay American Heroes Foundation. I talked about the effectiveness of the video and admitted that immediately after viewing it, I had wanted to make a donation, but I never did. The reason I didn’t donate was because of the foundation’s website. Click here to check it out.

Do you see what I mean? Their website is a mess. It is full of emotion, but it was hard for me to quickly determine what they plan to do with my donation and what the “return on investment” would be.

Your organization’s website is your face on the information super-highway. You can hook all the fish you want using tools like Facebook, Twitter, online videos, and email; however, you will never land those fish if you cannot instill confidence and clearly communicate your case. Online donors turn to your website to find this info. If it looks like you just vomited a website into cyberspace, trust me when I tell you: “it kills the mood as well as the will to donate”.

Creating your organization’s website is complicated because it involves skill sets in the following areas: technology, marketing & communication, and internet practices (e.g. search engine optimization, etc). However, if you want to be “donor-centered” in an online environment, then you need to be really good at ALL of these things (or outsource some or all of it to professionals who can help you).

With that being said, I strongly believe in life-long learning. You might not able able to be an expert in all things pertaining to websites, but it is possible to become knowledgeable enough. This is important because only you can make the strategic decisions that are important to your resource development and ePhilanthropy programs. For this reason, I was so excited to find all sorts of free online resources (e.g. articles, trainings, etc) from Network for Good on their online learning center website. Click here to see all sorts of resources pertaining to websites.

I bit off more than I can chew with this topic, so I will carry it over into part of next week.  Do you have any best practices to share with regards to your website? How do you fit your website into a comprehensive ePhilanthropy strategy? How does your ePhilanthropy strategy fit into your comprehensive resource development plan? In what ways have you exported the ideas of  “Donor-Centered Fundraising TM”?  We can learn from each other!

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson
Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC
eanderson847@gmail.com
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