Kivi's Nonprofit Communications Blog

This is the second 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 | This is Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

The fundraisers at Cal have decided to break away from their standard business letter appeal and try a bold, full-color brochure to convince alumni to become new donors to the university. From their focus groups, they know that Cal alums consider themselves unique and diverse – not like the cookie cutter graduates from rival private schools. They’ve also decided to speak directly to the audience by using the word “You” prominently in the piece. So the creative team went to work.

In early drafts, the simple imagery of the cookie cutter was meshed with too many complex messages about alumni, says Amy Cranch, a principal editor with Cal’s development communications department. It said, “You challenge convention. You have an independent spirit. You think freely.” The whole idea was that your life has been transformed by graduating from Cal, but in a way that left you your own person, explains Amy.

“It just wasn’t working,” she recalls. “There were too many disconnects, and the concept of the cookie cutter itself was a cliché and not very strong. The copy made very strong assumptions about people. It was not an invitation to agree with the ideas. It felt too forced.”

Virginia Gray, Cal’s associate director of annual giving and regional programs, agrees. “The whole thing wasn’t holding together. It wasn’t telling the kind of personal story we wanted.”

This is where many people would have given up and gone back to the standard form letter. When you are creating messages, whether they take the form of a tagline or design theme or epiphany at the end of an essay, you have to keep kneading the bread dough. At this stage, Cal had a nice lump of dough, but it was still a sticky mess. But they kept kneading it, waiting for that smooth, satiny finish to appear that tells you that you are done.

Amy’s boss had a middle-of-the-night brainstorm. Instead of telling Cal alumni what they were and sounding presumptuous – just what Cal grads hate – they would use famous alumni who are often described as innovators, free thinkers, and creators.

Everyone has the ingredients for good bread, but it takes knowing how long to knead it to produce something delicious.

Coming Tomorrow: How Cal designs a piece all about famous alumni without abandoning the “You, the Donor” ideal.

This is the first in a five-post series on a direct mail make-over currently being tested by the University of California at Berkeley (Cal), my alma mater. Read Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

The fundraisers at Cal had a problem: they needed to raise more money from alumni to support the diverse education and research programs where Cal excels, but their current direct mail program wasn’t increasing the size of the alumni donor pool. While the standard annual appeal in a letter format did a good job at renewing existing donors, says Virginia Gray, Cal’s associate director of annual giving and regional programs, the letters weren’t bringing in many new donors.

To learn more about these alumni who weren’t currently donating, Cal sponsored some focus groups. “We found that a lot of people felt like going to Cal was a big, impersonal experience and they didn’t have the same emotional connections and bonding experiences that you’d find at a smaller university,” says Virginia.

Cal must also contend with the misperception that as a state-funded school, it doesn’t really need individual donors. “At private schools,” explains Virginia, “you are educated about how the people before you are funding your education now, and that you need to give back so the school can go on. You don’t get that message at Cal.”

The alumni in the focus group also shared how they viewed themselves as a very diverse group and that the Cal experience enhanced that diversity, unlike other private institutions of similar caliber that churn out cookie-cutter graduates (the staid professionals that graduate from rival Stanford, for example, come to this Golden Bear’s mind).

The cookie-cutter imagery stuck with Virginia and her colleagues as they pulled together a creative brief for a new direct mail campaign centered on a full-color, multi-panel, graphic-laden brochure. While Cal had tried colorful brochures before, it would be the first time they had tried something as bold as they had in mind this time.

Coming Tomorrow: The cookie cutter concept falls apart, but an even better concept comes together.

Katya Andresen spoke at the NC Center for Nonprofits conference today, which I was completely thrilled about for two reasons: (1) because it was a sure bet that she’d have great tips I could pass on to you, and (2) because it meant that I got to have coffee with one of my blogging buddies face-to-face. Katya didn’t disappoint in either case!

Katya started teaching before she even put on her microphone. In the minutes leading up to the session, she walked up and down the aisles, personally introducing herself and speaking to people one on one. What was she doing? Getting to know her audience by actually talking to them as individual people. It’s a lesson that all of us in nonprofit marketing preach (know thy audience, know thy audience) and Katya showed us what that means before she even officially got started. As she moved through her points, she was able to refer to the people she had met in the audience, turning your typical staid concurrent session into a more friendly and personable workshop atmosphere.

You can find her slides here on her blog, along with a new white paper from Network for Good called “Wired Fundraising: How Technology is Making Fundraising ‘Good to Go’” so I’m not going to cover her advice point by point. Do go view the slides, because she has four easy questions you should always ask and three actions you can take to delve into Web 2.0 if using social media is a new or scary idea for you.

Instead, let me recount just a few of the examples from Katya’s talk that drive home her points about reaching your audience based on their EXISTING values.

Take Katy’s employer, Network for Good. Their old home page was the typical “about us” text heavy home page. Their new home page is all about the audience — donors who want to give online to nonprofits through a single site. And nonprofits who want to be listed in their directory simply need to click on the bright orange “Are you a nonprofit” button to get to the info they need.

The AWARE Foundation wanted to reach teenage girls about health issues. Instead of creating the typical sterile, doctor’s office health site, they created a site that immediately appeals to teenage girls at TeenHealthTalk. The design is casual and a little messy (not unlike a teenager’s room) and by using the word “talk” in the domain, they’ve picked up on the #1 hobby of teenage girls. The language is also very casual and teen focused. Something tells me that “Why Are My Boobs Lopsided?” isn’t wording you’d find so prominently featured on most health-oriented sites. For example, it’s not on the AWARE Foundation’s main site. TeenHealthTalk goes where teen girls are, so they’ll be in a comfortable spot, and thus much more willing to receive the information the organization is giving.

CARE’s donor base was people in their 70’s, and the nonprofit wanted to move that average age down by a few decades. To appeal to women in their 40’s, CARE latched on to a value that many women in this age group are familiar with: wanting to feel like you have some control over your life and the power to do what you want with it. So rather than pitch all the merits of their programs, CARE is pitching that feeling of power. Donors are powerful, and the people donors help through CARE are also powerful. Poor people have the power to change their world and you have the power to help them do it.

Kiva (which was also mentioned yesterday) is another shining example of an organization getting out of the way and making it all about the people they serve, in this case, people who want to lend small amounts of money and the entrepreneurs in developing countries who use that money to lift themselves out of poverty. Kiva could have a home page all about the merits of microlending programs, but that’s deeper down in the site. The users are front and center.

In closing, here are a few great nuggets of wisdom from Katya:

–When you hear yourself saying, “if people only knew about our issue . . .”, stop right there. People don’t need loads of information. They need a personal connection to the issue. It’s your job to find that connection.

–”Marketing” is not slimy, so get over your fear of the word. Marketing is about being persuasive, which all nonprofits need to be. Marketing when done right is actually very respectful of people, because it’s about a conversation, understanding your audience’s perspective and speaking to it.

–If you are trying to make a new friend, you don’t run up and get in their face, introduce yourself, tell your entire history, and ask “Will you be my friend?” That sends people running away. Instead, you engage in a conversation where you get to know each other over time. You guide your choice of topics and words based on what this potential new friend is saying back to you. Use the same approach when seeking new friends (donors, volunteers) for your nonprofit.

–The values of your donors that you choose to use to connect with them (like CARE using power) will often have nothing to do with your cause. This is perfectly fine!

And my favorite tip of the presentation:

–Have a general idea who your audience is, but not a clue what their values are? Do some Robin Hood Marketing and buy a bunch of magazines that your audience reads. Tear out all the ads and paste them on the wall. What are some of the common themes? How are these advertisers trying to make the readers feel about their products? What emotions and values dominate? Those are the values you should try to link your organization and its issue to. Madison Avenue spent millions figuring it out and you spent $30 on magazines!

Thanks Katya for a great presentation and a great chat afterward!

This afternoon at the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits Annual Conference, I attended another great session called “Social Media Technology: How to Raise Money, Recruit Volunteers, and Spread Your Message” by Chris Meade, COO of NPower, Charlotte Region.

NPower is a nonprofit consultancy that helps other nonprofits with technology. It has 13 affiliates around the U.S. Chris did an amazing job covering a huge topic in a little over an hour.

He opened the presentation with some general definitions and examples of what social media is and how it differs from traditional, linear communication. After going over some of the implications of using social media, Chris reminded everyone that social media is not a replacement for traditional forms of communication, but an add-on.

He broke down the field into four categories: Communications (podcasting, vlogs, blogs, rss, listservs), Organizing and Networking (event management, mapping, aggregators), Knowledge and Collaboration (wikis, bookmarking, discussion forums), and Hybrids (mashups, social shopping).

He then described the three ways that nonprofit can use social media.

(1) Raising Money: Friends asking friends for donations (sponsors for a 5K run), affinity shopping

(2) Recruiting and Engaging Volunteers: Friends getting others involved, self-service scheduling and participation (invitation management, meeting handouts), where knowledge is the volunteer’s contribution (support groups sharing stories and creating a body of experience and knowledge), training for staff, volunteers.

(3) Spreading the Message: Campaigning and advocacy, marketing and storytelling about mission and programs.

Next he shared some specific examples.

Komen effectively uses the “Friend to Friend” fundraising model for its walks/runs/events. You as a volunteer can use their template to ask friends to support you and you can chart your progress, including an honor roll of givers. You set a limited goal and your personal relationships help you meet it. They also do a ton of affinity shopping (all those pink products, the Garth Brooks Pink CD, etc.)

Kiva, the microlending network, lets donors lend to specific entrepreneurs in the developing world in very small amounts. At end of the loan period, you can get your money back. Default rate is less than 1%. It’s a very good way of taking wealth and helping other people on a one to one basis. The social media technology allows these very personal investments and connections to be made between people who are worlds away from each other. Volunteers have created a whole community around microlending.

wikiCancer — Allows people to create and edit the content of the site with stories and “what to do when diagnosed” tips. Wikis allow you to bring others in and compile resources and the latest thinking on an issue. You don’t have to wait for someone else to tell you the answer, because you are creating the answers yourself as a group.

Volunteermatch — A match-making site for nonprofits and volunteers that has grown into an online community, so you can hook up with other people who are interested in the same things you are.

NPower uses Sharepoint as a portal for its board, so they can share documents, calendars, etc. You don’t have to mail that board packet if everyone can easily access it online. Npower also uses Sharepoint as the CMS for their website.

Greenpeace is doing great work with viral videos on YouTube. (The hotel wireless blocked YouTube, so Chris couldn’t show the videos he wanted in the session, but I found them.) Share your message in 1-2 minutes. Well-linked videos allow you to dig deep and explore.

In closing, Chris offered these questions for nonprofits who are thinking about social media:

Is your audience online? More and more people will be, so it’s good to start now, even if your audience isn’t really there yet.

Are you willing to let others shape and morph your message?

Are you willing to share the “secret sauce?” You have to be willing to share strategy before it’s fully baked.

Do you have the time and interest to seed the process?

Chris suggests experimenting with social media as a new means of communication or volunteer engagement before using it as a fundraising tool. Move in slowly. Explore the various free sites, then procure and explore paid tools and technology that you can manage, once you have a good feeling for how it can work for you.

I’m blogging today and tomorrow from the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits Annual Conference in Winston-Salem. This morning, I attended a great session called “Building and Sustaining Your Individual Donor Base through Effective Stewardship.” The two speakers were Amanda Osborne, Director of Development for Fellowship Hall, Inc., an alcohol and drug treatment program, and Peggy Carter, Vice President of the Forsyth Medical Center Foundation.

The pair did a solid job of synthesizing and sharing some of the key points in the leading fundraising how-to books, sprinkling in examples and anecdotes from their own work. Their main point was that you have to know each and every donor individually to be an effective steward of their participation with your nonprofit. They offered different methodologies for categorizing donors based on why they give and on how they want to be thanked.

Amanda discussed the Seven Faces of Philanthropy and suggested that nonprofits try to recognize the different categories in their donor lists. Here’s a brief run-down of the categories, if you aren’t familiar with them.

Communitarians–They give because they consider nonprofits effective and they have strong ties to their community and local history. They represent 26% of donors, and tend to give to cultural and human service groups.

Devouts–About 21% of givers, they believe everyone has a responsibility to give and that it is God’s will. They are not interested in public recognition.

Investors–This 15% of donors gives in the same way that they invest–very business-like, want to solve problems and see results.

Socialites–They are interested in giving as entertainment, socializing as philanthropy, and like special events. They represent 10% of donors.

Repayers–They do good in return for what they have received and feel a personal responsibility to give back. They represent 10% of donors and typically focus on client needs, because they were likely once the clients themselves.

Altruists–They look for causes that offer a sense of personal fulfillment for them. Giving is the right thing to do for their own spiritual growth.

Dynasts–Giving is what their families have always done; it’s part of their socialization and their identities are often tied to giving.

Personalize and tailor your communications with your donors as much as you can. The same event invitations, newsletters, etc. are not going to appeal to all of your donors in the same way, or at all.

Donors also want to be thanked in different ways, and the only way you are going to know why way is right is to have that conversation with them. Do they want the plaque? Their name on a sponsor list? Ask and find out. Listen.

Amanda also reviewed some key points from Donor-Centered Fundraising. The majority of donors say they’d give again if after the first gift, they received three things: (1) prompt meaningful acknowledgement, warm and personalized (2) reassurance that their gift will be used as they intended and (3) meaningful results about the program they funded.

Forget the token thank you gifts (lapel pins, mouse pads). Gifts closer to your mission (artwork by clients, free tickets to performances, etc.) can work. But what people really want is a personal thank you. More than 80% of donors said that if a board member called and said thanks that they would give again.

Peggy talked mostly about the art and science of saying thank you to donors. She emphasized the need to say thank you with the same high-quality attention that you used to ask for the gift. She suggested that by making thank-yous a highly personal part of your work, you give your organization a personality that will bring donors back. Just as we relate differently to each of our friends and family members based on who they are as individuals, nonprofits should relate to donors in the same individual ways.

She then shared the guidelines for thank yous from Developing Major Gifts.

1. Gifts must be recognized by letter AND call
2. The gift size guides the type of thank you
3. The size of the gift guides who makes the thank you
4. Each thank you must be tailored to the donor
5. Use donor information to make thank yous as personal of possible
6. Donor wishes on how to be thanked must be honored
7. The more creative the thank you, the more appreciative the donor will be.

Some people want as much publicity about their gifts as you can muster. Others would be horrified by a press release. Ask, ask, ask! You can get really creative and come up with meaningful thank yous that may seem simple to you, but really impress the donor. For example, sending photos is an inexpensive but personal way to show donors the impact they are having. Even the smallest organizations can manage to send personalized updates with photos to their major donors a few times a year. Schedule a day where that’s all you do, and do it!

Are the copy and images in your nonprofit marketing materials drugging readers into ignoring you and your issue entirely? It’s a process called narcotization.

Here’s how it works. People were shown pictures of gum disease. One group saw photos of a mouth just a little rotten. The second saw photos of moderately rotten gums. The third saw horribly blackened mouths. The impact on dental care? Group one did what they always had. Group two did somewhat more flossing and brushing. Group three gave up entirely and stopped taking care of their gums and teeth. The idea is that if you think a problem is inevitable and overwhelming, you shut down and stop trying to fix it.

I read this example in Chuck Palahniuk’s book of essays called Stranger than Fiction while on vacation recently. In an essay called, “Dear Mr. Levin,” Palahniuk describes narcotization and then goes on to show how author Ira Levin beat the process by charming people into thinking about complex and difficult social problems through his incredible storytelling, way before the issues were a mainstream concern. Rosemary’s Baby, published in 1967, is about abortion rights. The Stepford Wives, published in 1972, is about the backlash against feminism. Sliver, published in 1991, is about electronic voyeurism.

These varying levels of information and our responses to them reminded me of the research that shows a powerful story about one person works better in fundraising than stories about multiple people. I talked about this recently in 10 Ways to Use Storytelling in Your Nonprofit.

Here’s how I see the connection between the two. Using a bunch of statistics about your issue is like showing a mouth that’s just a little rotten. It doesn’t motivate people to change at all. Showing them the suffering of large groups of people is like the blackened mouth. It’s just too much to take and people throw up their hands and don’t see how a donation to you will make a difference. But talking about a single person’s plight is like the moderately rotten gums. It’s bad enough to motivate people to want to help, but not so bad that they feel helpless.

So what can nonprofit communicators learn from Mr. Levin? Palahniuk says he uses metaphors that slowly reveal the issues and solutions without blatantly hitting us over the head with them. He uses humor to charm and worst-case scenarios to scare (Against a woman’s right to choose? Well, what would you do if you were pregnant with the Devil’s baby??) Says Palaniuk of Levin: “You created a fable to get our attention and inoculate us against the fear by creating a metaphor, a character that models the wrong behavior . . . That method gives the reader the moment of realization, the emotional moment of ‘ah-hah!’ And teaching experts say that unless we have that moment of chaos, followed by the emotional release of realization, nothing will be remembered.”

We may not be capable of writing some of the best-selling suspense novels of all time, but we can certainly apply some of these concepts in nonprofit communications. Bring your potential supporters along through your story. Build up to that “ah-hah” moment. Show that one donor what he can do to help, without making him feel helpless. Use anecdotes to let your volunteers learn from the mistakes and successes of others.

Jeff Brooks at Donor Power Blog is looking for posts on what’s good or bad about fundraising for next week’s Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants. Here’s what’s bad about fundraising from my perspective as a nonprofit marketing and communications consultant.

These are the three reasons that I nearly always turn down requests to write grant applications and direct appeal letters (although I gladly do supporting materials like case statements and donor newsletters).

1) Nonprofits blame you, the grant writer, if they don’t get the funding, even if their project is really weak or they are applying to the wrong funding source. Even a beautifully written grant application can’t turn a lousy project into a winner, nor can it convince a project officer to fund you if the project is outside her area of interest.

2) It’s boring. I find writing grant applications, especially those for government agency grants, really boring. You usually have to follow a specific format and play to certain buzzwords and criteria, which can force you to talk about the project in unnatural ways, while also draining the really interesting points and creative storytelling out of the package.

3) I don’t want to keep up with the latest and greatest in direct mail marketing. With all the various metrics out there for direct mail these days, and the mix of art and science that direct mail marketing has become, it’s now a really specialized segment of the field, and it’s not one I’m interested in keeping up with. Maybe this is just a perception perpetuated by fundraising consultants who don’t want to share clients with those of us who focus more on general communications and marketing, but it’s working on me.

I’m sure there are people who love, love, love writing direct appeal copy and grant applications, but I’m not one of them. If you are, tell me what I’m missing by leaving a comment.

Michele Martin at the Bamboo Project asked about our favorite learning resources and what gets us excited about learning new things. I get tons of great information from reading other people’s blogs, but I saw that Rosetta Thurman wrote a great post about that already, so I’ll go with another favorite learning tool of mine: playing around with new software and online services via free trials.

As I’ve explained here before, I am a do-it-yourself nut and often try multiple solutions to a single problem. Free trials help fuel this habit. (Before you recommend that I enter self-employed consultant rehab, rest assured that I am getting better about hiring others to do the really important or really hard stuff, rather than trying to learn how to do everything myself.)

Still, I’ve found using free trials is a great way to learn about the abilities and limitations of various systems and how they could impact my clients’ work and my own business. By seeing what software and services can do, you also open up new possibilities you may not have considered before. Most free trials limit quantities, but that can match up just fine with a test run of a new campaign.

Along those lines, here are some free trials you might want to try, if you are considering ramping up your nonprofit communications, while learning something new along the way.

Hobbling along with Publisher or PageMaker?

Adobe is now offering 30-day free trials of all of the products in the Creative Suite line, including InDesign, which is the far and away the best layout program out there. I hung in there with PageMaker for several years because a couple of clients used it, but I’ve told them I’m done with it and going with InDesign 100%. It’s not cheap, but it’s worth it, and there are ways to get it for less (TechSoup has it right now for $60). If you want to test-drive the full CS line, which also includes DreamWeaver, PhotoShop, Illustrator and several other programs, you can get a CD for $9.99.

Still pondering an email newsletter?

If aren’t sending out an email newsletter yet, simply because you are afraid of the tech side, relax. It’s really quite easy these days. I use iContact for clients and some of my own newsletters. They have expanded way beyond e-newsletters to offer RSS feeds, surveys, autoresponders, and the like. Their free trial is for 15 days and you can send 1,500 messages to up to 250 subscribers. That’s plenty of room to test drive a new e-newsletter. Just make sure that you have your list together before you start the trial so you don’t waste free days.

I’ve also used ConstantContact and know several people who like their service, even though I’m not using it anymore (because I like iContact better). But since we are talking free trials, why not sign up for this one too and figure out what you like best? They offer email newsletter and survey services. They’ve got a 60-day trial offer.

Looking for a way to manage online photo galleries?

Of course, if you are simply looking for ways to share photos online, I recommend Flickr. But if you want more control over how your images appear in a gallery and you want that gallery integrated into your own website, I like Shozam, which I wrote about earlier this week.

Forget photo galleries — Do you need actual photos?

I highly recommend that you use photos everywhere, but especially on your website, in your print newsletter and in your annual report. My favorite site for stock photography, and it seems I use it almost daily lately, is iStockPhoto. They don’t have a free trial per se, although you can browse and download comps (photos with their logo on them) for free. You can purchase credits for as little as $12, so it’s close to free.

Considering a postcard mail campaign?

I use VistaPrint for business cards and also for postcards. They give away lots of free samples, customized with your logo, etc, including 250 business cards, 10 note cards, 100 postcards, one pad of post-its, and a rubber stamp. You pay shipping and handling. Why not get the postcards and run a small trial mailing for a campaign you’ve been considering? You could match it up with that new email campaign your test-driving too!

OK, that should keep you busy for awhile!

One last tip on the free software downloads . . . be sure to keep track of what you install and uninstall anything you decide you don’t want. I ended up with five different photo galleries on my computer and it was a mess to clean up.