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August 2, 2011 DonorDreams Uncategorized

ePhilanthropy: Mission Possible

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

August 1, 2011 DonorDreams Uncategorized

Email is tricky. Period!

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

July 29, 2011 DonorDreams Uncategorized

Hooking fish but not landing them

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

July 28, 2011 DonorDreams Uncategorized

Places everyone! Online videos and fundraising

Some research indicates that people retain 5-percent of information communicated verbally compared to 20-percent when it is communicated both verbally and visually. I suspect this comes as no surprise to many of us. I know I’ve always told friends that I am more of a “visual person”. Moreover, this seems to be totally supported by the popularity of television and movie theater entertainment.

What was surprising to me was how biased and opposed I originally was when a colleague presented the idea of using an online video strategy to solicit donors for contributions. I was convinced that the only place online video should be in a comprehensive resource development plan is in prospect identification and possibly in cultivation and stewardship activities.

As with many of my hard held opinions on fundraising, they usually get challenged and I end up softening and reconsidering. In this case, I started changing my mind when a friend forwarded me this fundraising video for a foundation that fights bullying for LGBTQ youth. Check it out … click here.

OK … are there any dry eyes out there?

While I was moved, I still didn’t make a donation to that foundation because I wanted more information about programming and impact. However, I was persuaded to soften my position about the role online video might be able to play in the solicitation process.

Shortly after this experiece, my friends at Boys & Girl Clubs of Indianapolis partnered with Cantaloupe.TV and produced a series of online videos aimed at introduction, cultivation, solicitation and stewardship. Here is one of the videos they produced … click here. You can check out their other online videos, which are posted on their webpage.

Perhaps most persuasive for me was an amazing online training I found online titled “Lights, Camera, Action!” by Elliott Greenberger and Davin Hutchins of See 3 Communications. I found the training on Network for Good’s fundraising123.org training website. Click here for the session description and access to additional audio and video links at the bottom of that screen.

So, I am still not totally convinced that online video is a super effective solicitation tool because I cannot find any good data that shows me how much money anyone has ever raised using this strategy. However, I can say that I am all ears and very open-minded to learning more. Please use the comment box below to share your experiences. Results? Strategies that worked or didn’t? What you plan on doing differently in the future? If you have a good example of an online video used for solicitation, please paste the link into the comment section so we can all see it.

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson

Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC

July 27, 2011 DonorDreams Uncategorized

Facebook and fundraising

My partner and I just rented “The Social Network” from Blockbuster two weekends ago. (Yes, I know I’m a little behind on my rentals). After watching the movie, I am left with the following questions:

How can Facebook be valued at $50 billion (source: Kerry Dolan of Forbes)?
How can Facebook have 750 million active members (source: Facebook statistics)?
Are there any fundraising success stories where a non-profit raised significant contributions using Facebook as a solicitation platform?

Of course, my curiosity got the best of me and I ended up spending hours and hours on Google surfing and clicking. I was a bit surprised when I didn’t find much of anything. As a matter of fact, The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Peter Panepento blogged about it last year and concluded that Facebook isn’t a solicitation medium; it is a relationship building platform that might best be used for prospect introduction and awareness building as well as cultivation and stewardship activities.

It is important to remember that The Chronicle based its conclusions on “survey research,” which I believe always needs to be looked at a little skeptically. While there are truths in what was reported, I also found this interesting blog post by Sarah Kessler where she points to five successful Facebook fundraising stories (however I didn’t find much fundraising data backing up her conclusions).

While non-profits still seem to be figuring out how Facebook can fit into a well-rounded resource development plan, one trend that seems to be emerging is for-profit organizations partnering with non-profit organizations in the Facebook environment on cause-related marketing projects. For a good example of what I mean, check-out this example of what Arby’s is doing on Facebook to help end childhood hunger.

If you want to jump in and play on the cutting edge of philanthropy using Facebook, here are a few suggestions you may want to consider:

Do your homework first and make the decision upfront on whether you want to use “group fundraising strategies” or “traditional fundraising strategies” to develop, organize and implement your efforts. Peter Deitz has an awesome PowerPoint uploaded to SlideShare with lots of educational and benchmarking value.
Figure out the biggest question facing Facebook fundraisers … how can you encourage your efforts to take off and go viral? Ken Goldstein of The Nonprofit Consultant Blog demonstrates this idea nicely with his story about a woman and the Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.
Determine which of the four fundraising applications you will use in your Facebook environment (or will you more than one)? Peter Deitz of Social Actions did a nice job laying out all of your options in this NTEN blog.

I guess, I still hang onto the opinion that Facebook is probably still a better venue to create awareness, introduce prospects to your mission, cultivate prospects and steward donors. However, I am open-minded. What does your organization do on Facebook? Have you ever had resource development success on Facebook? If so, please share specifics. We can learn from each other.

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson

Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC

July 26, 2011 DonorDreams Uncategorized

Tweet me the money

As I mentioned on Monday, I plan on using the rest of my blog posts this week to look at different aspects of ePhilanthropy. Hopefully, I will be able to cover a lot of different subjects including Twitter, Facebook, email, websites, PURLs, online video, blogs, and more. Today, let’s touch on Twitter.

As I drove my good friend Teri to Midway airport on Monday, we started talking about social media and the role we see it playing in resource development. We both agreed that what we see being most successful is non-profit organizations using social media to acquire new prospects, spreading the word about their mission, focusing on their case for support, and stewarding donors by communicating ROI messages. Neither of us were able to really come up with very good examples of how social media has been used as a solicitation tool and raised substantial money.

This ate at me as I made the trip home from Midway airport. So, once I got home, I started searching for an example of a non-profit organization that used social media to solicit donors and could be held up as a success story. It didn’t take me long and I am a little embarrassed that I quickly found an example in my very own backyard of Elgin, Illinois.

In 2009, the Community Crisis Center has struggling because the State of Illinois is broke and significantly behind on paying reimbursements to non-profits holding state contracts. It was in this moment of need that The Center turned to public relations guru and social media expert Sarah Evans and asked her to work her online magic.

Sarah organized an online fundraising event that she called “Crisis Overnight“. On June 18th, she took her laptop to The Center and spent the night. All night, she blogged and Tweeted about her experience, what she saw, and the stories that unfolded in front of her. In a nutshell, Sarah brought the mission and case for support alive online. With every Tweet and blog post, she pointed her friends and supporters to an online donation page.

Needless to say, people were moved and Sarah was very successful. Her fundraising goal was $150,000 and she raised $121,397 according to the Community Crisis Center’s 2009 annual report. Not only did 700 donors make contributions online, but people got in their cars and drove donations to The Center ($800 arrived by foot between 6:00 and 9:00 pm alone).

This was not magic … here are just a few observations:

The technology didn’t raise the money. It was Sarah’s masterful way of bringing the mission to life, making the case for donors to get involved, telling stories about clients and services, and creating a sense of urgency.
It wasn’t just Twitter or blog or website or email … it was multi-channel and integrated. She used many tools and funneled everyone to an online donation page.
She didn’t just yell at the top of her lungs into the Twitosphere. She used the hashtag to focus and nurture a mission-focused conversation that walked people down the path of action.

So, here is one very cool example that flies in the face of what I initially believed about social media only being good for non-solicitation activities.

Has your organization ever attempted to use social media to solicit individuals? How did you do it? Was it successful or not? Why or why not? If not your organization, have you seen others try it? What was the result? We can learn from each other. Please use the comment box to share with everyone!

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson

Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC

July 25, 2011 DonorDreams Donor-centered fundraising

Deja vu and ePhilanthropy

An old friend of mine, Autumn Porter, sent me a Facebook message last week asking for help reconciling two very different ideas — face-to-face solicitations versus online videos & electronic pledge forms. As I stewed on how to respond to her, it dawned on me that resource development professionals, who have come before me, must have had a similar “moment”. I suspect that this deja vu moment probably occurred at the advent of the direct mail era.

First let me frame Autumn’s dilemma. On one hand, she was told that she needs to get out there, roll up her sleeves, infiltrate professional networks, schedule in-person workplace solicitation meetings, and ask … ask … ask. On the other hand, she has been told by a local employer that they are an “electronic workplace” and really think it would be better to ask their employees to view an online video over the company’s internal network and be given the opportunity to complete an electronic pledge form. Here is Autumn’s question:

“How do I begin to merge these two tangents into some sort of donor-centric approach? Are there examples of using social media to tie us directly to their heartstrings? Can we create a lasting connection of the human experience without being in the same square-footage? If people give to people, how do we continue to reach the people with the capacity to give?”

As I said earlier, “deja vu” all over again! With that being said, I suspect that those fundraising professionals who addressed similar questions during the rise of direct mail would probably stand here today with the same advice … “Know Thy Donor” and solicit them in the manner that they would like to be solicited. I also firmly believe that resource development professionals know that face-to-face solicitation is the most effective, efficient and respectful way to solicit. As such, good RD professionals know that there is a threshold when direct mail, email, social media and telephone calls are not respectful and in those circumstances they reach into their solicitation toolkit and use the most appropriate tool.

So, my best advice to Autumn can be summed up by this YouTube video highlighting a psychic, cosmic conversation between Luke Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi.

All kidding aside, I plan on using the remainder of this week’s blog posts to talk about ePhilanthropy and social media. In the meantime, I am interested in how you would answer Autumn’s questions. Please use the comment box below to weigh-in with your best world-class advice.

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson

Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC

July 22, 2011 DonorDreams Board development

I quit

A few days ago, an Executive Director friend of mine from Indiana emailed me a link to an article in Philanthropy Journal titled “Exodus of Executive Directors Expected“. I encourage everyone to read this article in full because it is deeply disturbing. It is also very telling about the state of the non-profit sector.

According to a survey cited in the article, 67-percent of respondents said they plan on resigning their executive director position in the next five years. While there are many reasons cited, I found it most interesting that many of the reasons deal with the board of directors. I suspect much of this originates from conflicts such as:

board members not engaging enough in fundraising and resource development
board volunteers having unrealistic expectations of staff
disagreements over how to address economy related issues (e.g. can we cut our way out of this budget hole versus let’s roll up our sleeves and do some fundraising)

We can go on and on with possible examples, but let’s stop here because all of this really isn’t the issue. There are two bigger problems

Only 17-percent of organizations who participated in the survey have written succession plans.
Fundraising is ALL about relationships and when human capital starts leaving your organization it can impact the relationships your organization has with volunteers and donors.

So, there are a few options I suggest you start considering:

Be proactive and ask your organization’s HR Committee (or set-up an ad hoc committee) to start working on written succession plan. Here is a link to some great resources published by The Foundation Center.
Roll up your sleeves and start doing the hard work associated with engaging and reinvigorating your board. I blogged about this a few weeks ago. Click here if you want to re-read the post I titled “Really? An Exhausted Board?”
Ask different board members and fundraising volunteers to engage in stewardship of your existing big donors. When your most important donors have multiple relationships with board and staff, they are less likely to be upset when their one and only connection to your organization quits.

While it is almost impossible to prepare for someone’s resignation, there are things you can do to get your organization in the best possible position to deal with it when it arrives. And keep your fingers crossed that it doesn’t come in the form of a YouTube video like this one “The BEST EVER way to quit a job!! HOAX“.

Do you sense frustration out there among non-profit staff? Do you agree with the Philanthropy Journal article? Do you think there are ways to avoid the exodus or best prepare for a scenario like this? Please use the comment box below and share your thoughts. We can all learn from each other.

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson

Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC

July 21, 2011 DonorDreams Board development

I will survive

With more than 15-years in the non-profit trenches, I’ve come to the conclusion that non-profit work is incredibly difficult and demanding. This probably explains why most of the “non-profit lifers” I know seem to have a theme song that defines their non-profit spirit and serves as a motivator during the tough times.

My non-profit theme song is none other than “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor. Click here to enjoy a few tracks from this iconic song.

The reason Gloria found her way into my head this morning is because of a conversation I had with a dear friend about services I’m thinking about including in the business plan for my new consulting practice. She said something that really concerned me about the state of our non-profit community. Of course, it was Gloria that used to get me through troubled times, which is why she probably returned this morning to soothe my troubled non-profit soul.

Specifically, the thing she said that still has me in its grips is that most non-profit organizations she works with or watches are in “survival mode” and they don’t seem to have the time or resources to engage in capacity building, technical assistance or training. She went further and shared her observations that non-profits are mostly engaged in budget trimming, downsizing, and complaining about the economy and their “fate”.

On a “personal note” … if this is true, then my new business will have more than a few challenges. It is a good thing I LOVE challenges!

On a “bigger picture note” … if this is true, then we (the non-profit sector) have a bumpy road ahead of us because I’ve always thought that “survival mode” was a euphemism for a slow and painful death. Lou Holtz said it best when he said, “In this world you’re either growing or you’re dying so get in motion and grow.”

So, here I am stuck with many questions in my head and thought I’d pose them to my blog subscribers and anyone listening out there:

Do you share this opinion that non-profits are hunkered down in survival mode and not investing in revenue growth, board development, program development and expansion?
If any, what technical assistance services do you see other non-profits investing their time, energy and money into?
Where do you think non-profits should be focusing their time, energy and resources that will give them the best chance to survive over the long-term? Board development? New donor cultivation efforts? Current donor stewardship efforts? Planned giving? Endowment building? Annual campaign development? ePhilanthropy? Strategic Planning?

Please use the comment box to weigh-in with your thoughts. Your input will help me with my business plan, but I think it can also help others get a better idea on how to “survive” during tough economic times. Because if we fail to see that we can’t “cut our way to better health,” then I will have to alter my version of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” to something that looks like this … click here to see this ugly alternative ending.

Here is to your health!

Erik Anderson

Owner, The Healthy Non-Profit LLC