The apology that Susan G. Komen for the Cure issued on Friday was the first step. The obligatory resignations are next. But if Komen is going to repair the damage done by its behavior last week, they have quite a few more steps in the process.

“What should Komen do next?” That’s the question many of you have asked me, and it was certainly the top question asked of me in my role as nonprofit marketing pundit last week.

Here’s what I think they need to do next:

Diversify the staff and board

The decision to defund Planned Parenthood ended up being extremely political — the topic itself is highly politically charged, not to mention the actual individuals involved. Even though Komen has apologized, supporters have little reason to trust that the current leadership team won’t make another political decision down the road, whether it involves Planned Parenthood or not (stem cell research, anyone?).

One way to help rebuild that trust, and to keep the promise about keeping politics out of it, is to openly and publicly diversify the board and senior staff so that politically progressive voices are represented, and supporters see those right-leaning and left-leaning people working together to find a cure. Except for a few leaks here and there, the Komen board has been conspicuously silent. Adding a well-known progressive (or two, or three) with some name recognition to the board (the real board, not all those advisory boards), would be a smart move.

Same goes for senior staff. This has largely been the Nancy Brinker Show, and I don’t think people are particularly fond of it right now. Might be time to switch up some of the voices, and maybe people will tune back in.

Listen to the substance of the backlash and “change your evil ways”

This isn’t Komen’s first brouhaha. If you look at all those social media comments (and Komen should be paying someone to read and categorize it all), you will see that was simply the last straw for a lot of people. They are tired of Komen bullying smaller charities and making every consumer product available pink (the pink handgun deal wasn’t sanctioned, apparently, but the fact that everyone believed it could be tells you all you need to know).

This ended up being about much more than just Planned Parenthood. And going back to the “old” Komen isn’t an option. So why not really learn from the substance of the backlash, and use it to create the “new” Komen — one that demonstrates that it can really listen to and learn from its supporters? That’s what good marketers do — they listen to supporters and critics alike, and bringing that knowledge back into the organization to make the services it provides even more valuable.

Learn how to use social media, especially Twitter

Whoever is managing the official @komenforthecure Twitter account doesn’t really get it. They keep doing these run-on tweets where they take a longer statement and break into a bunch of tweets that they send out all at once. If you read some of them independently, they don’t really make sense. Tweets need to stand on their own.

The majority of Komen’s tweets over the last week have been versions of the above, or @replies with corrections of what others are saying (No, we didn’t endorse the handgun. No, she doesn’t make that much.)  It’s a very old-school PR approach to Twitter, and it doesn’t really work. Get conversational, Komen! And make a clear point in 140 characters without requiring surrounding tweets to be read.

One of my biggest criticisms of Komen at the height of the controversy was their complete silence on social media for almost 24 hours (longer on Twitter), followed by official statements only. Even if they had simply posted something like, “We are listening. We hear you. We are talking internally about our next steps, and will get back to you soon” it would have been infinitely better than the nothing, followed by official-speak, that we got.

Twitter and Facebook aren’t just fun and games anymore. I think that should be pretty obvious given what happened the past week. We all need to know how to use social media in various situations, including a crisis.

What else should Komen do?

What else should Komen be doing now, especially on the marketing/communications side, to rebuild trust with supporters?

Would love to hear your comments!

Love the daily blogging? Great! If not so much, switch to Kivi’s weekly email newsletter with blog highlights and then unsubscribe from the blog’s emails.

Tom Ahern

Tom Ahern is my go-to guy for all things direct mail. Afraid your direct mail piece goes too far and will solicit a negative response? Tom explains why that may not be a bad thing. Plus he quotes one of my other favorite fundraising bloggers, Jeff Brooks.

If you are interested in Tom critiquing your direct mail appeal, sign up for our Direct Mail for Small Nonprofits e-clinic in May. Like our Facebook page, and you’ll find a $50 off coupon code on our Freebies & Coupons tab for the e-clinic.

~Kivi

Guest Post by Tom Ahern of Ahern Communications

It had arrived. And I trembled.

In my in-box was an email from a new client. The subject line: “Responses to the appeal letter.” Lily was reporting in. I’d written an appeal for her agency. She had taken a big risk on it. And we all had our fingers so tightly crossed that our nails were turning blue.

I closed my eyes … wrapped my arms around a really deep breath … and clicked the email “open.” Where I read….

“The appeal has had a huge impact!” Lily’s email began. Lily is the manager of annual fund and membership. She is gung-ho star material, ready to scale walls and shoot threads from her wrists, and totally dedicated to the organization’s success. Which is the culture at this place.

My breathing began again. Well, OK then. ‘Huge impact.’ I can cling to that. I guess I’m not a totally incompetent nincompoop.

But her next statement raised an issue. “We are starting to get in responses to the appeal – some very positive … and some very angry.”

Let me set some context.

I work under something called “the Verbatim Rule.” I ask my new direct mail clients to agree that they will send out what I write for them exactly as I write it, without fiddling. Verbatim. Not a word changed, unless I made a factual error.

The Verbatim Rule exists for one reason: to sanctify the intensity of professionally crafted direct mail.

Direct mail is not a medium that rewards meekness. Clients who want to tone it down, who judge it “too sales-y,” who second-guess the mechanics (“…a P.S. is so undignified…”) will undermine a full and healthy response.

The Verbatim Rule is good for me (less cursing under my breath). And it’s good for the client (more income).

But there is a footnote to the Verbatim Rule: Expect complaints.

Replacing inoffensive direct mail with real direct mail, filled with black arts and emotional triggers, is like replacing ordinary fences with electric fences.

Expect reactions.

Strong direct mail will touch nerves.

And not every nerve you touch will enjoy the experience.

Are complaints a problem? Not really. Unpleasant, maybe. But, handled properly, I think they’re pretty much the definition of an opportunity to have a great conversation with a supporter (first, though, see Jeff Brooks‘ note on who complainers typically are; below).

In direct mail, ALL response is indicative of something worth knowing. Complaints are as good as praise, in that regard.

Negative response means your appeal went far enough emotionally. Complaints mean your appeal was upsetting enough to get noticed. It’s a weird measure, I know. But it’s accurate to the penny.

Lily was okay with a few complaints, because we’d discussed that phenomenon in advance. Still, she was concerned. What she really wanted to know was this: How many angry responses is too many?

There’s no industry measure I’m aware of. Certainly, none is mentioned in “bibles” like Mal Warwick’s How to Write Successful Fundraising Letters or Alan Sharpe’s Mail Superiority: How to Run a Profitable Annual Direct Mail Fundraising Program (Amazon links).

Jeff Brooks knows a heck of a lot more about this stuff than I do. So I asked his opinion, and he wrote back, “I’ve never heard of a standard metric for complaints. Twenty-five per 10,000 does strike me as unusually high.” That was a number I’d suggested. “But even then, I’d hesitate to worry; that number is statistically equal to zero. And most complainers turn out to be lapsed and/or low-dollar donors. The paranoid fantasy of some orgs — that our fundraising will cause everybody to up and leave — wouldn’t be measured by complaints, but by a serious drop in retention. The only fundraising tactic I’ve seen do anything like that is rebranding. Strong fundraising, never. It increases response AND retention.”

Tom Ahern is often described as “one of the world’s leading authorities” on how to speak properly — and profitably — to donors. He’s authored four well-received how-to books on donor communications, and delivers dozens of workshops internationally on the techniques of successful fundraising communications. A constant practitioner, Tom writes fundraising materials for some of America’s leading nonprofits, constantly honing his specialties of donor newsletters, direct mail, and case statements. Get Tom’s training and advice on your next direct mail letter during the Direct Mail for Small Nonprofits e-clinic at Nonprofit Marketing Guide in May 2012.

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

(Updates to this post can be found at the bottom.)

Yesterday afternoon, and continuing into today, I believe we are witnessing the accidental rebranding of what is surely one of America’s biggest and most well-known, and even well-loved, nonprofit brands.

Komen for the Cure, it seems, is no longer a breast cancer charity, but a pro-life breast cancer charity.

Let me stop right here and say this post is not about abortion per se, one way or the other, other than the fact that it is the single most divisive issue in American politics today. My personal beliefs are very clear and public. But how you feel about abortion is really irrelevant to this communications debacle unfolding before us.

This post is about what happens when a leading nonprofit jumps into a highly controversial area of public debate without a communications strategy, stays silent, and therefore lets others take over the public dialogue, perhaps permanently redefining the organization and its brand. Watch and learn, so you don’t make the same mistake on whatever hot button issues your organization might be wading into.

Here’s what happened yesterday afternoon:

The AP reported that Komen for the Cure has decided to halt grants to Planned Parenthood that were used for breast cancer screening for low-income women. According to the reports, this decision was made in December and communicated to Planned Parenthood, which urged Komen to reconsider. Komen, citing a new policy that prevents grants to organizations under investigation, said because Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-FL, is investigating whether government money was improperly spent on abortions, the  decision to pull the funding was final.

The AP story broke yesterday, and within hours, Planned Parenthood sent a fundraising email out to its network, asking supporters to replace the money that Komen had pulled for breast cancer screenings for low-income women.

Within minutes, both Facebook and Twitter were swamped with pro-Planned Parenthood, anti-Komen comments.  At one point last night, I did a quick count and found the ratio of anti-Komen’s decision to pro-Komen’s decision to be about 80 to 1 on Twitter.

Some typical anti-Komen tweets:

Some typical pro-Komen tweets:

Adding another twist to the story, it seems that Karen Handel, Komen’s senior vice president for public policy, who was hired in April 2011, is a pro-life advocate who, when running for the Republican nomination for governor in Georgia, made her opposition to Planned Parenthood quite clear.

Now let’s look at Komen’s response . . .  which is no response (until about 90 minutes ago). As one person on Twitter put it, just crickets.

Komen didn’t post on its Twitter or Facebook feeds last night, or first thing this morning. The only Komen action on their Facebook page had been to delete anti-Komen comments, so the ratio of negative to positive looks more like 10 – 1 instead of the 80 – 1 (and even higher this morning) on Twitter.

Komen’s most recent tweet was about prostate cancer in a mummy.

On Facebook, the most recent update was about a new sponsor, Energizer.

Take a quick look at the wall posts on Energizer’s page, and I suspect Komen has one unhappy sponsor right now (how unfortunate for Energizer to be the last update on the Komen page — it would have happened to any company in that position when the news broke):

Then around 10 am Eastern today, Komen finally updated its Facebook page. As of this moment (11:30 am ET), still no update on Twitter:

So What the Heck is Going on Here?

Let’s give Komen the benefit of the doubt and assume that they made this decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood very thoughtfully and deliberately. In that case, they would surely have realized that the likelihood of the story going public was high. They may not have counted on Planned Parenthood being so aggressive in turning the Komen decision into a fundraising campaign, but even without that, it’s still a big news story because of how high-profile Planned Parenthood funding of any kind is right now. And that’s all about abortion, which is about as divisive an issue as you can get in American politics right now.

The “Try to Rise Above It and Pretend This Decision Isn’t about the Most Divisive Social Issue in America” Strategy

Yet it appears that Komen wants to desperately pretend that this decision is being made in some completely different context. By not responding at all to the overwhelming negativity being thrown their way, and continuing to pretend that this has nothing to do with a red-hot social issue, they are alienating a big part of their constituency.

It seems like they are hoping this will just blow over. It won’t. This isn’t Komen’s first branding debacle: See the Kentucky Fried Chicken incident and suing smaller charities for using “for the cure” but I’d say it’s the biggest one yet.

What Should Komen Do Next?

Earlier this month, I urged nonprofits to decide how they are different, to embrace that, and forget the rest. Previously Komen stood out as a tremendous organizer and mobilizer of women across the political spectrum who would raise money like crazy for them. They kept it nice and simple, and non-controversial. Wear that pink ribbon and raise money to fight breast cancer.   The abortion debate was nowhere in sight. It was all about the breasts, and not about the uterus. And I think that’s one thing that made them different — Komen was an organization that dealt with women’s health issues without getting caught up in the abortion debate, like most women’s organizations end up doing.

No more. They took a deep dive into the hot swirling waters head first (but apparently eyes shut). No matter what they do from here on out, they will be forced to pick sides, and that’s just awful for the Komen brand.

If they stick by their decision, they will endear themselves to pro-life women, and lose the pro-choice. If they give in to the pressure and petitions, they will win back the pro-choice women, but anger the pro-life. It’s a no-win situation that could have been avoided had they developed a communications strategy on this decision at the start. Sure, they would have still angered many of their supporters, but I believe they could have avoided this huge rift had they communicated upfront, and honestly, about the decision. They should have released it, instead of letting Planned Parenthood own the messaging.

The Branding Challenge, Part II

Now that they are full on into the abortion debate, Komen (I think) must now come out and say whether they think abortion causes breast cancer. If you look through the comment stream now, that particular question is what pro-life and pro-choice commenters are arguing with each other about. And as an organization with a mission to prevent breast cancer, I think it’s reasonable for supporters to expect Komen to make a statement about various theories on what causes it, including this one.

Let’s see how they handle that question, and whether they use it as a second chance to mend their brand, or if they fall deeper into the non-communicative abyss.

Can Komen Heal the Rift?

Regardless of how you feel about abortion, what do you think Komen could do to bring pro-choice and pro-life women back together to fight breast cancer hand in hand?

Or do you think this will all blow over with little long-term affect on Komen?

Share your ideas, and your thoughts on these communications questions in the comments.

UPDATE at 5:30 pm Eastern, 2/1/2012:

I’m quoted in this Politico story on the Komen mess.  As the day went on, and Komen continued to say nothing, I got even more annoyed with how awful they are handling all this. They still haven’t tweeted anything (and that stupid mummy prostate tweet is what people see when they check their profile). So my criticism got a bit harsher . . .   ~Kivi

UPDATE at 6:30 pm Eastern, 2/1/2012

Check out this analysis of the social media commentary by PoliPulse:

UPDATE at 9:00 am Eastern, 2/2/2012

Last night around 10 pm, after declining interviews with network news and major newspapers, Komen finally started tweeting and released this video response:

Contrast this response to what Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards did: interviews with all the major networks and this MSNBC interview:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This morning, Beth Kanter published a post including a description of my process for creating this post (if you are interested in how content gets developed and the concept of newsjacking).

UPDATE at 5:30 pm Eastern, 2/2/2012

Nancy Brinker, founder of Komen, is interviewed by Andrea Mitchell.  Do you think it helped or hurt?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

UPDATE at 8:00 am Eastern, 2/3/12

Komen board member speaks to the New York Times in Outcry Grows Fiercer After Funding Cut by Cancer Group. He says this really was specifically about Planned Parenthood and not overall “grant excellence” as Brinker has claimed. The article states, “John D. Raffaelli said Komen had become increasingly worried that an investigation of Planned Parenthood by Representative Cliff Stearns, Republican of Florida, would damage Komen’s credibility with donors.”

UPDATE at 1:23 pm Eastern, 2/3/12

Komen releases an apology and states they have amended their policy that the investigation must be “criminal and conclusive in nature and not political.”

Planned Parenthood’s response to the policy reversal.

Do you think this changes anything or is the damage done to the Komen brand irreversible?

UPDATE at 9:15 pm Eastern, 2/6/2012

THANK YOU everyone for such a lively conversation in the comments! But since the majority of new comments on this post are about religious arguments instead of nonprofit communications and management, I am closing comments. I will blog more about the Komen communications issues later this week and invite you to comment on that post.

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

Elexa Liu

We love to hear success stories about the nonprofits we work with. Elexa Liu works with Hope Worldwide in Hong Kong and has participated in many of our training events both online and in person (Yes, she flew all the way to Seattle to take part in the Total Focus Marketing Plan Workshop I teach with Nancy Schwartz). She recently sent me this email on what happened after she started focusing on telling a good story instead of inundating her supporters with boring statistics.   ~Kivi

Dear Kivi,

Hope you are doing well. Again, thank you for sharing/teaching/passing on your knowledge and experience and resources about nonprofit marketing and communication.

I have been trying to implement all that I am absorbing from you and others (notably Tom Ahern) in my communications pieces – tell stories, “report” back what good has been done with the donations, lay forth visions, and thank, thank, and thank. In essence, going for the heart and the head. For the past 2 years, unsolicited donations from existing supporters has been increasing.

A private individual recently asked us to submit a proposal to apply for a donation of approximately HK$400,000 (about US$51,600). She came to our centre for a visit and told us that our newsletter was what caught her attention as she researched about different NGOs to support. She said most of what she read were boring facts and program details. Instead, we had a story that touched her heart but we also laid out the vision of what we do to help the kids.

So thank you! I still have much to learn (sometimes I feel like my head would explode!) but this was indeed very encouraging to me.

Best regards,
Elexa

Have you made a shift in your communications that’s working? We’d love to hear your story too, so please feel free to share in the comments.

As I’ve said before, presidential campaigns are great for nonprofit marketers and fundraisers because they give us a sneak peek into how we’ll be engaging our supporters and motivating them to volunteer and donate in the years to come. The current edition of Newsweek has a very interesting description of what the Obama campaign is cooking up, including these especially noteworthy observations.

It’s All About Hyper-personalization and Targeting

If you don’t have some kind of system in place to keep track of what your individual supporters care about, this is the year to figure that out. You are going to want that information. Look at what the Obama campaign is doing (I added the bold):

“The campaign can do a much better job of “treating people like people,” according to Michael Slaby, Obama’s chief integration and innovation officer—provided it harvests the right data. Don’t ask a disenchanted Ohioan for money; woo him first. Don’t reach out to a supporter who donates $5 during the State of the Union the same way you’d reach out to a supporter who donates $5 during a Republican debate; they respond to different incentives. To figure out who each of us is, and what each of us wants, Slaby and his team are constructing a “microlistening” and computer modeling program that will comb online and off-line behavior patterns for voter information, then use it to personalize every interaction we have with the campaign: fundraising, volunteering, persuasion, mobilization.”

“In 2012 the Obama campaign won’t send its backers a video and say, “Share this with everyone you know”; it will say, “Share this with your four Facebook friends in Pennsylvania’s crucial Lehigh Valley swing district who are worried about the president’s tax policies.”

Need help with this? Start with Idealware’s constituent management recommendations and case studies.

Go Where Your Supporters Already Are

Rather than investing in creating its own social network, the campaign is going where everyone already is — Facebook — and leveraging all it offers for their own purposes.

“In 2008, the campaign encouraged supporters to create profiles on a social networking site called MyBarackObama.com. But while MyBO was advanced for the times, it was also weirdly detached from the actual field structure—and from Facebook, which has since become the world’s default social network. So for 2012 Slaby decided to ditch the site and start from scratch. “We’re not building a social network,” one insider told me. “You don’t need to create an account. You don’t need to upload a photo.” Instead, by logging in with their Facebook ID, volunteers get immediate access to “any tool that you can get in a field office.”

Need help with this? We are offering our “Social Media Starter Kit: Facebook for Nonprofits” webinar next Thursday, January 19 for All-Access Pass Holders. CharityHowTo also offers good Facebook training.

Make It Work in Mobile

You can’t ignore it . . . people are looking at your website and reading your email on something that’s often smaller than a business card.

“Last November, the campaign redesigned its website so that it would look and work the same on every platform: PC, mobile, tablet. The motivation wasn’t merely aesthetic; a site that renders properly on a smartphone makes it easier for volunteers to register new voters and call undecideds on the go, and that kind of efficiency translates into extra votes.”

Need help with this? Stay tuned! I’m excited that Tonia and Susan from TheMGen will be joining us this spring with blog posts, a free webinar, and an e-book on mobile.  Also check out Google’s How to Go Mobile initiative.

It may be many years off before your nonprofit reaches the level of sophistication described here, but it will get there eventually. Start doing what you can now, by understanding what’s happening and taking baby steps in those directions.

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

Lisa Maher

Lisa Maher has been sharing guest posts with us this year about the kinds of direct mail communications she received after donating to several nonprofits last year.  This is her third and final post (you can also read part one and part two.)

Guest Post by Lisa Maher

We are coming to a close on this in this year-long experiment on the types of direct mail solicitations received and I’m back again to share even more of my findings with you. I hope all of you enjoyed my first post about the importance of a personal, visual, heartfelt message and my second post with updates on all of the exciting, or not so exciting, direct mail that I have received.

Since I’ve been tracking all of my direct mail since January, I have amassed quite a collection. While most pieces have been eye-catching and informative, there have been a few missteps along the way. An organization that I think does great work said I could save time and paper by donating online…and the link provided in the letter did not work! Needless to say, I let them know right away!

An organization that did provide an effective alternative to sending in a check was the National Parks Conservation Association. In their last direct mail solicitation letter, they asked me to renew my membership and provided a handy insert that listed the other ways I could donate: online or directly through my bank.

They also sent me a calendar and a follow-up e-mail a week later asking me if I’ve received my calendar. I found this to be quite effective and was a great way to remind their members to donate.

And, I now have a calendar that will remind me of this fun and thought-provoking experiment. I hope that you’ve enjoyed this experiment as much as I have. If Kivi decides to run this experiment again, I encourage all of you to do so! This has been a great learning experience for me…and I hope for all of you as well! Thank you to Kivi and all of her readers.

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

I recently interviewed Sandy Rees from Get Fully Funded about her new book by the same name. Listen to our 8 1/2 minute chat to hear Sandy’s tips on how to get ready to fundraise (and why it’s such an important first step), the differences between successful fundraising nonprofits and those who fail, and what you should being doing in early 2012 to set yourself up for a strong year of fundraising success.

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

The new Money for Good II Study by Hope Consulting and GuideStar has a few interesting findings about the kind of information that donors want to hear from nonprofits.

While you are probably used to lots of scrutiny from your foundation grantmakers, only a third of individual donors research organizations before giving. People who advise donors on giving, and those foundation funders, research almost every donation they make.

When organizational funders and individuals do look for information about your nonprofit before giving, here’s what they want to see:

• Your financial information (how you get your money and how you spend it)
• Your impact (what difference are you making)
• Your legitimacy (your status, reputation and credibility)
• Your mission (what you are trying to accomplish)

Your annual report is one communications piece to help you meet the information needs of your donors — current and potential. I’ll discuss this New and Improved Nonprofit Annual Report during our webinar on Wednesday.

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

Kristina Leroux

A few Nonprofit Marketing Guide.com readers have asked about QR codes so I thought it would be a good idea to get my assistant, Kristina, to explain what they are and how you can use them.  ~Kivi

Guest Post by Kristina Leroux of Kristina Leroux.com

QR Codes have actually been around for a while. They just took a while to catch on here in the U.S. Our friends at Wikipedia tell us that QR (Quick Response) Codes were originally created by a Japanese corporation to track car parts. It’s a two dimensional bar code that was designed to allow for quick decoding, but honestly, I know you don’t really care about the science behind it, right?

You just wanna know what’s the big deal and what the heck it does, right? Well, that little box stores information such as addresses, contact information, or website addresses. Anything you’d like it to, really. So, if you have a QR Reader on your cell phone (and there are several apps available), it will scan the code with your phone’s camera and automatically take you to, let’s say, a website on your cell phone’s browser. Pretty cool, huh?

How to Create One

It’s easy! You just need a QR Code Generator. I have used Kaywa and QR-Server before. I’ll be using QR-Server’s generator, called GOQR.ME, for this post since it gives you a few more options.

Once you have downloaded the image, you can add it anywhere you could add a photo or other image.

How to Read One

You will need a QR reader for your phone. Some phones have them installed, but you may have to download an app. You can find them in your carrier’s app marketplace and there are a lot of them.  I have a Droid X and use QR Droid.

Each app will vary, but basically you will be prompted to scan the QR code. That sounds all sci-fi, but it really just consists of you using your phone’s camera. Just hold the phone still until it is done scanning the code. Once it has “read” the code, you should be prompted to either visit that website or download whatever information was in the code.

What to Do With One

The possibilities are pretty much endless. Ask yourself:

• Where are the folks I want to reach?
• What do I want those folks to do?

Some ideas:

Fundraising: Direct potential donors to your “Donate Now” page.
Business Cards: Contact info could simply be scanned into your phone.
Marketing: Put QR Codes on brochures or fliers at your events or any place where people will be out and about.
Services: Add a QR code to the front door of your facility that sends people to your services page.
Calendar of Events: Link to your event’s page.

Now keep in mind, people scanning your QR codes will then be using their phone to look at what’s linked to the cod. If your website or donate now page is difficult to navigate on a mobile phone, rethink sending them there.  You can create simple pages that are better for cell phone browsers and use those.

I recently received this direct mail piece from Samaritan’s Purse. That QR code takes you to a video about their mission.

How might you use QR codes? Leave your ideas in the comments.

Kristina Leroux is Kivi’s little sister and executive assistant. She also runs Kristina Leroux.com, a virtual assistance service that provides online administrative support to nonprofits and entrepreneurs who need to spend more time focusing on their passion to help others and less time worrying about administrative and technical issues. You can find her on Facebook and Twitter or email her at kleroux [at] kristinaleroux [dot] com. For more “how-to” posts, check our her blog also.

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.

I’ve never liked fundraising thermometers.

For me, unless you are fundraising to increase global warming or to pay for a new heating system in your building, temperature rising in a thermometer really doesn’t make much sense as a visual for achieving fundraising goals. Sure, most people understand what you are saying, because fundraising thermometers have become so cliché, but I don’t think that’s a good enough reason to stick with bad artwork.

How you visually convey your goals should be a compelling part of your campaign!

This summer, I posted a question from Luke Reynebeau, a student board member and program coordinator for the University of Minnesota YMCA,  about alternatives for fundraising thermometers. I was so impressed with the creativity in all of your comments that I enlisted the help of Julia Reich Design to illustrate several of the ideas.

We’ve turned them into a free download to help you think more creatively about ways to show fundraising progress. It may be too late for this year’s annual campaign, but I encourage you to take a hard look at your goals, to get inspired by the e-book, and to think about changes you can make in 2012.

I also hope that the various providers of online fundraising pages will jump on this and start offering alternatives to thermometers too!

Download “No More Fundraising Thermometers!” Now

Get all of our webinars and e-books for one price with the All-Access Pass! Get a full year for $465, or 90 days for $145.