Nonprofit Communications

I just got a sneak peek at the slides that Jeff Brooks of Donor Power Blog will be sharing during this Thursday’s (5/1/08, 3:00 ET) webinar: What Do Baby Boomer Donors Want from Your Nonprofit?

Jeff says the good news is that Baby Boomers are the wealthiest and largest generation in U.S. history. The bad news is they are much more demanding than their parents’ generation. So what do they want from you? Control over their relationship with your nonprofit, for one thing.

And what does that really mean and what do you do about it? What impact does it have on the way you communicate with your donors? You’ll have to get those answers straight from Jeff. Register for the webinar ($35 for whoever can fit around the monitor and speaker phone) and you can ask all the questions you want about Baby Boomers and your nonprofit. Jeff will answer as many as he can during the hour.

By Guest Blogger Claire Voyant

If you’re a later baby boomer, maybe you remember “The Archies” singing their animated hearts out during the Saturday morning cartoons.

“Sugar, Sugar . . . ah, honey, honey. You are my candy girl . . . ”

Now that you’re a grown-up, working in the wonderful world of nonprofits, you may be singing that song quite a bit. Only it’s this version:

“Sugar, Sugar . . . ah, MONEY MONEY.”

That’s ironic, isn’t it? The very term, “non-profit” conjures up an image of NO MONEY, little money, or at least, not thinking about turning a profit. What’s that old saying, “Money is the root of all evil?”

But the joke is, “The LACK of money is the root of all evil” – and we know, the lack of money is no laughing matter when you’re trying to run a nonprofit. Money really matters. Every penny, every nickel, every thin dime must be spent wisely.

In Kivi’s survey of upcoming webinars (do it now if you haven’t already), one topic focuses on getting the most out of your communications consultant. When I saw this, I wanted to grab my tambourine and sing, “ . . . you are my candy girl!”

Spread the word, Kivi, and help save those dimes. I know that one message will be, “quantity does not equal quality” and another will be “learn how to identify billable busywork.”

Spreading your message is extremely important, and it doesn’t have to break the bank if you know what you need – and what you don’t. You may only need a sprinkle of sugar and a dab of honey to sweeten your communications. The more you know about the sugar and the honey – the more you’ll get out off your candy girl (or guy.)

Rob Blizard

A good friend of mine, Rob Blizard, has written an interesting article (pdf) for the Planned Giving Today newsletter on the effectiveness of online tactics like web pages and email in marketing planned giving to nonprofit donors. If you aren’t hip to the development lingo, planned giving refers to gifts often associated with estate or retirement planning, like leaving a nonprofit in your will or establishing a charitable gift annuity or charitable trusts.

The article includes lots of interesting examples where online marketing is working and where it’s not. Could this be a mismatch of tactics and audience, since most people who are interested in making planned gifts are much older than the typical online donor? Or is it just a case of early adoption, where those nonprofits who are testing online marketing for planned giving now will be the first to see it payoff later as the Baby Boomers age?

Read the article for Rob’s take and then let us know what you think by leaving a comment. (If you are reading this through an email subscription, just click on over to the blog to leave a comment.)

Rob is currently the director of gift planning for Mount Vernon and previously worked for the Humane Society of the United States. In addition to your comments on the article, you can also leave questions for Rob here too.

No more Santa, please!

If there is any chance that your supporters will receive mail from you in the coming weeks with references to holiday giving, PULL THE PROJECT NOW! (Yes, I’m yelling in ALL CAPS!) I don’t care what else is in the newsletter or the direct mail package, if you are referring to Christmas or end-of-year giving in any way, do not mail it.

I have received two pieces of mail like this in the last week. One was a newsletter from a social service agency asking people to include the organization in their end-of-year giving plans and to remember loved ones by purchasing ornaments on an “Angel Tree” at the hospital. That tree was turned into mulch weeks ago. The second one was from a humane society, complete with photos of homeless pets in Santa hats, with puppy dog eyes pleading for a home for the holidays. I’d rather not think about what happened to those animals.

I know print projects get stuck in the pipeline. It happens to all of us and it is really frustrating. You can blame your printer or the mail house, but the result is the same: your supporters will see the holiday references, chuck the whole thing, and wonder what the heck is wrong with you.

If someone with solid direct mail experience wants to explain to me how Christmas references received the fourth week of January still work on donors, I’m all ears. But until then, I say pull the job, regardless of how much time and money have already been invested. If it really is your printer or mail house’s fault, and not just your rushed scheduling, talk to them about credits to your account. Otherwise, eat the cost. Consider it the price of preserving your reputation with supporters and of learning the hard way to pad your publishing schedule. It’s always better to be a little too early than way too late.

Have you heard the one about the breast cancer patient on Twitter and the frozen peas yet? If so, you can skip the next paragraph and move on to why I think this is such a great lesson for do-it-yourself nonprofit communicators. If not, here’s the quick summary:

Susan Reynolds gets a breast biopsy and then a mastectomy. She is an avid social networker, so she’s tweeting and blogging the experience at Boobs on Ice. She posts a photo of herself easing the pain with a bag of peas on her breasts. Long story short, the crowd goes wild, she’s got people all over the place taking photos of themselves with bags of peas, and now there is a Frozen Pea Fund that’s raised over $7,000 for the American Cancer Society. I learned about this story from Craig Colgan, who wrote a great feature for the Washington Post called “How Frozen Peas Started A Movement: Cancer Patient’s Blog Builds Web Community,” which you can read on his blog. Oh, and this all took place in less than five weeks.

The lesson here is not how social networking lets you make friends and influence them to part with cash. We’ve seen tons of examples of that working. The big lessons are instead (1) be completely human and (2) let others run with your ideas. That’s how to build an online community that actually accomplishes something.

While I have never spoken with Susan, I seriously doubt that posting a photo of herself with frozen peas sticking out of her camisole was some calculated move to raise money. Instead, it was authentic, natural, and also a bit funny. In other words, it was completely human. And that’s what people respond to. They don’t respond to monolithic nonprofit organizations with mission statements and action plans. They respond to human beings.

Then, she let it take off. People started taking the pea photos. A online friend suggested donating the price of two bags of peas to breast cancer research. Another suggested setting up an actual fund to group the donations. And another, who just happened to be doing consulting on social media and working with the American Cancer Society brought it all together. Lots of people are doing lots of different things and something tells me Susan is not chained to her computer trying to micromanage it all. She’s got better things to do, like fight her breast cancer. She doesn’t need to do anything else but what she’s been doing all along on Twitter and her blog. It’s happening, in some ways now, without her.

My guess is that the being human part will be much easier for most nonprofit marketers than the letting go part. But if you are willing to run a bit of risk of people going completely off-message, you might find they come up with something that’s way better than you ever dreamed.

One the biggest challenges organizations face when trying to improve their nonprofit marketing programs is to stop thinking about themselves and to focus on their audience instead.

One analogy I use in my nonprofit training courses is gift giving. With the holidays still in our short-term memories, you’ll recognize some of the five types of “gifters” here – but will you recognize your own organization? Think back to when you were a kid – whose gifts did you want to tear open and which ones were guaranteed to be lame?

Cranky Old Grandpa. He doesn’t care what you want, because you probably don’t deserve anything anyway. Kids have it so easy these days and they’re all spoiled brats who have no idea what the real world is like.

These are the nonprofit staff who are bitter that they have to ask for donations and help at all. If people don’t understand their issues and support their work, it’s not the nonprofit’s fault – it’s because the audience is full of selfish idiots. In other words, nonprofit marketing is a waste of precious time they need to spend on real work, so why bother?

Cranky Old Grandma. Unlike Grandpa, she does think you deserve a gift, but like Grandpa, she really doesn’t care what you want, because she knows better. You are going to get an electric toothbrush if you are lucky, and a scarf she kitted if you aren’t. Either way, that present is going to be good for you, and you better like it.

“Cranky Old Grandma” nonprofits write newsletters that are full of articles about the organization, its activities, and its issues, with little regard for who actually reads the newsletter. In fact, they aren’t even sure who’s on the newsletter list, and it really doesn’t matter. They believe that they alone should decide the content of the newsletter, regardless of what the readers may be interested in, and that’s what they are going to provide.

Your Older Brother. He knows he is supposed to get you something, but he doesn’t want to put any thought or effort into it, so he is going to regift something he got for his birthday.

These are the nonprofit communicators who fill their publications with articles from other sources, with little original content, because it’s quick and easy and they want to check the newsletter off of the to-do list. Some of it may be helpful, but it’s a toss-up most of the time.

Mom and Dad. They know what you really want and also what you need. They give you a mix. You’ll get that hot new game you wanted, because they want you to be happy, but you’ll also get something you need, like socks and underwear.

“Mom and Dad” nonprofits are those who are sincerely interested in understanding their audience and try to speak to their interests and values in most of their communications, but they can’t quite let go of all of the organization-centered information – the typical “message from the executive director” column, for example, is still at the front of the newsletter.

The Cool Aunt. She asks what’s on your wish list, or asks others what you are into these days, and she gets it right every time.

These nonprofits know who are they communicating with and are constantly checking in with their audience, whether by talking to them directly or staying on top of larger trends. They regularly adjust the content of their communications to be relevant to their audience and what those people are interested in or concerned about at any given time. Their donors and supporters can tell that the nonprofit cares what they think and is grateful for their participation. And the donors and supporters love the nonprofit in return.

So which kind of gifter is your organization? Are the print and online publications your produce as part of your nonprofit marketing strategy and communication plan a real gift to your donors and supporters, or are they simply what you think they need or what you want to give them for your own selfish reasons?

Start working your way down on the continuum from Cranky Old Grandpa to the Cool Aunt, and by the time we come back around to this year’s holiday season, you’ll be the favorite nonprofit on everyone’s list. Need some help making that transition? Check out my nonprofit marketing training schedule.

If the boomers have all the money and time for nonprofits, it seems like getting on social networking sites like TeeBeeDee, Multiply, and Eons would be a much better investment of time for nonprofits seeking new donors through social networks than creating MySpace and Facebook pages.

This New York Times article describes several recent rounds of venture capital investments into social networking sites like these aimed at the over-40 and -50 crowd.

“There are 78 million boomers — roughly three times the number of teenagers — and most of them are Internet users who learned computer skills in the workplace. Indeed, the number of Internet users who are older than 55 is roughly the same as those who are aged 18 to 34, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, a market research firm.”

Newsweek ran an essay by Robin Wolaner, the founder of TeeBeeDee last week that provides some additional enlightenment:

“We boomers behave online just as younger people do—shopping, banking, learning—but we have not yet committed to social networks. Sites like MySpace have felt unsafe or a waste of time . . . The goal was authenticity; that sounds simple, but many ventures aimed at our generation have failed because they think of us as one big market.”

While these sites target older generations, social networking for boomers is a young field. It’s hard to say which of these sites will rise to the top, but if you see social networking as a growing element of your online marketing strategy (and who doesn’t?), it’s worth experimenting with at least one of them. Compared to Facebook and MySpace, the competition from other nonprofit causes will likely be slim — but not for long.

This is the fifth in a five-post series on a direct mail make-over currently being tested by the University of California at Berkeley (Cal). Read Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

This week I have chronicled the story of how Cal’s fundraisers took a new approach to turning alumni into annual donors by creating a graphic-driven, audience-directed, full-color brochure. While the results of the direct mail campaign aren’t in yet, I believe you can still pull several lessons from their experience.

1) Connect with your audience’s memories and emotions. A large group of alumni has never responded positively to Cal’s annual appeals. Instead of continuing to send them more of the same kind of mail that didn’t work, hoping that the alumni would change their minds, Cal conducted focus groups. They honed in on some themes they heard directly from those alumni, and worked with those concepts, even though they weren’t all necessarily positive (e.g., Cal is big, impersonal place.)

2) Try something new and test it. This is the first time Cal has produced a brochure as bold as this one. But rather than sending it out in the world all alone to see how it performs, they also wrote a traditional business letter using the same theme. This split-testing will tell them much more about the success of the brochure than if they had sent it out alone.

3) Let your ideas evolve. Cal started with a cookie cutter theme based on focus groups. But it simply didn’t work. Rather than abandoning the concept completely or sticking with it simply because the focus groups had used that terminology, the fundraising team let the idea evolve into one that worked. I compare it to kneading bread dough until it is smooth and shiny. I have a folder on my computer labeled still cooking for article ideas that aren’t quite ready for publication. I’ve found that it takes at least three iterations from the original concept before the images and text of an idea really gel. (Enough cooking metaphors; you get the idea.)

4) Let the graphics talk. The Cal piece works graphically because it appeals to our natural curiosity, but still provides enough clues that we don’t stray too far away. Take the Trendsetters tagline, with the Rolling Stone cover of Bono. Now, I know Bono didn’t go to Cal, so I’m thinking, “What’s the connection? Let me read this small type down here.” Turns out Jann Wenner, ‘67, is the cofounder and publisher of Rolling Stone Magazine and upon closer inspection of the image, I see that he wrote the cover story on Bono. (I personally think that using the Bono cover is also a subliminal message since he is now one of the faces of modern philanthropy, but Cal says that’s not the primary reason why they chose it.)

5) Use “You” Without Being So Obvious. The first drafts were full of “you” statements –“you this, you that” and they were too presumptuous. While I am completely on the “You” bandwagon for nonprofit marketing, especially donor communications, some people are taking it too far. I believe smart donors can see through it, and once everyone employs this technique, the effectiveness of that single word alone will dim. What will not fade, however, is the power of more creative, sophisticated messages that are built off the concept of “You, the donor” without overdoing it.

I hope you enjoyed the series this week. Let me know what you think by leaving a comment on any of the installments.

Special thanks to Amy Cranch and Virginia Gray of Cal for their detailed, honest accounts of the process!