Welcome to another round of Mixed Links! We’ve got some great social media and communications posts today.

This post by Kari Saratovsky not only sheds some light on the recent rise in Pinterest, but also shares some great infographics on Millennials. Check out The Millennial Story, Told By Infographic(s).

Think Facebook was confusing before? Beth Kanter shares What Do Facebook’s New Timeline Apps Mean for Nonprofits? Make sure you are fully awake (having a big mug of coffee, not a mixed drink!) when you get into this one. It’s powerful stuff, but not necessarily easy to understand.

When I released my 2012 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report, I found that creating and sharing videos gained more in importance for nonprofits from 2011 to 2012 than other social media channels. Nonprofits are definitely beginning to see the benefits of being able to tell their story visually (more on that in my e-newsletter next week). If you are looking to jump on board, YouTube has just released even more features and tutorials in their YouTube Nonprofits Program.

For more ideas on using videos, Lori Jacobwith gives us an Awesome Example of Using Technology to Keep Supporters Engaged.

The folks at Throwing Light ask the question, Email Tsunami: How Much Is Too Much? Leah has some great ideas on how to find what’s right for you and your organization. I know this is a big question for many of you, so if you are curious what other nonprofits are doing, see what our Trends Report showed.

And for email’s staying power, Allyson Kapin proclaims Email: Still Not Dead! I love the point she makes about Mark Zuckerberg proclaiming that email will die, while requiring that people have an email address to sign up for Facebook. Be sure to check out the great infographic she uses to make her point.

Katya Andresen shares some new and interesting statistics in Why You Need Someone Else to Be Your Messenger. She explains why only letting your executive director or CEO speak for your organization may not be the best idea. People’s trust in these positions has gone down recently as folks rely more on recommendations by “regular” people.

Last but not least, Jeff Brooks writes How to Handle “Great Fundraising Ideas” From Your Board. And by “great fundraising ideas” he means “horrible fundraising ideas.”

I’m off to hang out with 35 Girl Scouts for a Camp-In (so I’ll be saving my Happy Hour for later in the weekend). Anyone want to guess how much sleep the adult chaperones will get tonight?

See you next week!

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Robyn Mendez

Does your organization look to Gen Y for support? This guest post by Convio’s Robyn Mendez explains why and how you should get thier attention.  ~Kivi

Guest Post by Robyn Mendez, Marketing Manager for Convio

Can your donor have a real lifetime value if they aren’t with you for life?

While it’s no secret that Gen Y doesn’t have much giving power today, the important thing to recognize is that they will soon. If your organization wants to benefit from the true potential of a Gen Y’s lifetime value, you need to be cultivating relationships with them today.

You can start by learning who they are, what matters to them and then connecting with them their way.

Who is Gen Y?

Gen Y is loosely defined as people born between 1981 and 1991, which today would make them between the ages of 20 and 30. They often delay traditional milestones, like moving out of their parents’ home, marriage and children.  They also are more educated and more technologically dependent than previous generations.

What’s important to Gen Y?

• The Internet:  One of every three college students and young professionals surveyed globally believes the Internet is a fundamental resource for the human race – as important as air, water, food and shelter.   (Note to self:  take daughter on humanitarian visit where people are starving before her college graduation.)
• Mobile Devices:  Two-thirds of students and young professionals cite a mobile device (laptop, smartphone, tablet) as “the most important technology in their lives.”
• Social Media:  Nine out of ten young adults have a Facebook account – of those, 73% check their Facebook page at least once a day. *

How do they connect to charities?

The Next Generation of American Giving Report shows that Gen Y-ers are very comfortable with both peer-to-peer solicitations (87% say it’s appropriate) and social media solicitations (69% say it’s appropriate). Further, we know that the most common first engagements Gen Y has are visiting your website (27%) or attending an event (19%). And as always, making a good first impression is critical to retaining their interest (talent & treasure) in future years.

What do we do with them?

Now that we know a little more about who they are, what matters to them and how they are connecting to organizations, let’s discuss some ideas to better engage them.

1. Optimize your website for viewing from a mobile device

It probably didn’t take reading this post for you to know that young people are addicted to their cell phones.  And with the increase of mobile use, the demand for mobile-friendly websites also strengthens. If your website is not equipped to provide a positive experience for mobile users, you are ignoring the important trends and needs of your younger participants and risking losing valuable donors from your organization. Our Guide to the Mobile Web can help get you started.

2. Make online fundraising tools easy to use and interactive

Many online fundraising tools have added new features helping make the fundraising experience much more interactive.  Displaying badges, sending trigger emails at fundraising milestones and integrating with social media sites are just a few features to look for.

3. Add Google+ into your organization’s social media mix

Generation Y is hanging out on social media and your organization and event should be there too. On Nov. 7, Google opened the ability to create a Google+ Page to the world.  This is the Google+ version of the Facebook Fan Page.

(Note:  like all social media platforms, be sure you have the resources to maintain a Google+ page before creating one.)

4. Add social sharing icons to your website

These easy-to-add tools help your participants and donors promote your website to their friends on the various social networks.  The easier you make this, the more frequently that your visitors will promote your site leading to more visitors to your site… it’s a wonderful cycle!

5. Pepper your print advertising & communications with QR codes

QR codes are barcode-like images that can be scanned with a smartphone camera.  Once scanned, these images typically point to a page on the internet.

A recent study by comScore noted QR codes have increased popularity among young, affluent adults like those we are trying to attract to our fundraising events.  The study noted that in June 2011, 14 million mobile users in the US scanned a QR code, 53.5% of them were between the ages of 18-34 and a third of users had a household income of $100K or greater.  If our target audience is using QR codes, we should be using them too.

6. Recruit a young, hip social media volunteer

A great way to attract a younger crowd to your event is to showcase one of their peers who feel passionately about your cause.  The youth of today know what’s exciting to them and can bring new ideas to the table.  Don’t be afraid to allow this person to assist you with crafting your event’s social media strategy and owning specific pieces of that plan.

*“What’s important to Gen Y?” data from the 2011 Cisco Connected World Technology Report.

Robyn Mendez has an extensive background in fundraising and nonprofit marketing and is currently a marketing manager for Convio, a leading provider of technology solutions for nonprofits. Convio has two solutions perfect for peer-to-peer fundraising, TeamRaiser and Common Ground Social.

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Rachel Hope Allison of Big Duck presented a great webinar for us last week on multi-channel, integrated marketing and fundraising. (Missed it? All-Access Pass Holders can review the recording now.)

I really like this one recommendation from Rachel: Pair an ask for a donation with a “no-money” ask during a campaign. Let me be clear right up front . . .  you don’t ask for both of these things in the same communications piece, but rather you alternate the asks throughout the campaign.

For example, maybe you ask your supporters to sign a pledge in one email, then ask for a donation in another, then go back to the pledge in the next one. The campaign may last for several weeks or even a couple of months, and you go back and forth between the two different asks depending on the campaign schedule, the various communications channels you are using, etc.

The no-money ask gives your supporters another way to get involved and engaged in your cause whether they want to give financially or not. And it gives you something else to talk about, besides asking for money every time.

Here are some of the different kinds of no-money asks that you could pair in a campaign with an ask for a donation.

• Take a pledge, or make some other promise or commitment
• Watch a video and share it
• Upload of photo (of you with a sign, or doing something in particular)
• Ask a question
• Take a survey
• Download something
• RSVP for a free event

In the example that Rachel shared in the webinar, the National Military Family Association paired an ask for a donation to support a camp for military kids with an ask for supporters to upload a photo of themselves thanking those kids for their service as military family members. The photos would then be compiled into an honor wall the kids would see at the camp. It’s an especially great combo, because the two asks are so closely related to one particular program, the kids’ camp.

What kinds of asks can you pair up with a donation request during your campaigns?

Need More Help with Integrated and End-of-Year Fundraising?

I’m teaching Your End-of-Year Email Fundraising Plan on Wednesday in the Nonprofit Marketing Guide webinar series. Register for $35.

The Direct Mail for Small Nonprofits E-Clinic with Tom Ahern starts on November 8. Use goodmail as the coupon code and save $50.

Get an All-Access Pass now, and you can attend the email fundraising webinar on Wednesday, watch the recording of Rachel’s webinar on integrated fundraising, and get a coupon code for $100 off the Direct Mail for Small Nonprofits E-Clinic, all for just $145.

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 originally wrote this article as a guest post on the Nonprofit Technology Network’s blog, but just realized I hadn’t shared it with you, so here it is!

Your website is out there for all to see. You never know who’s going to end up visiting. So how can you create website content that all kinds of potential visitors will find interesting and engaging?

We could get into a traditional marketing discussion about target audiences and personas, but let’s go at this challenge in a different way. Let’s think about the stages that your supporters go through as you build rapport with them over time. To keep it simple, let’s group your website visitors into three categories:

Strangers: People who know nothing about you.
Friends: People who like your organization or cause.
Fans: People who LOVE your organization or cause.

What kind of content does your website need for each of these groups?

Strangers: People Who Know Nothing About You

If someone knows nothing about your organization and lands on your website, what’s the first thing you want them to see?

It’s not your mission statement. Trust me.

What you want them to see is the answer to their question.

If a stranger lands on your website, odds are they are searching for the answer to a specific question about something going on in their lives right now. Maybe it’s a problem they want to solve, or something they heard from a friend or saw on TV that piqued their interest. They went searching, and Google or another website with a link to yours pointed that stranger to you, thinking that you might have the answer.

What three questions are strangers who land on your site most likely to have? For some nonprofits, the answers are obvious. If you run an animal shelter, one question will be “What animals are available for adoption?” If you run a Meals on Wheels program, one question will be “How can a senior get food delivered?” If your organization addresses a particular disease, one question will be “What is the treatment?”

The best way to build rapport with strangers is not to babble on about yourself; it’s to be a good Samaritan who answers their questions. These questions are almost always programmatic in nature, and rarely about donating, volunteering, or otherwise helping you out.

Devote space on your home page and/or within your navigation to answering the three big questions most likely to bring strangers to your site. When you do, they are more likely to become friends, which brings us to our next group of visitors.

Friends: People Who Like Your Organization

Friends know you, at least a little bit. They may have an incomplete picture of you, but the one they do have is favorable. What do they want to see on your website?

No, it’s still not your mission statement.

Tell your friends some good stories.

Stories are the quickest and most memorable way to explain what it is you do, how you do it, for whom, and why. You want these friends to get it.

Tell stories about people like them, so they can see that they belong. If you are trying to get more young families to participate in your program, tell a story about (you guessed it) a young family already in your program.

Tell stories that appeal to their inner guardian angels. Show them how they – through being your friend — can look out for someone else or change someone’s life for the better, even if only in a small way.

Tell stories with a sense of adventure or wonderment. Appeal to that inner child that’s looking for a break from the day-to-day responsibilities of adulthood.

Help them learn more about what you do, but not through long statements of need or bulleted lists of programs and services. Images tell stories too – often better than words – so don’t forget photographs and video as you create your website content. Connect with your friends through good storytelling, and some of them will grow into big fans.

Fans: People Who Love Your Organization

Fans are people who know you well, and they love you. They are ready and willing to help – as long as you make it easy for them. What do they need from your website?

Anyone for the mission statement? Anyone? Of course not!

Give your fans clear calls to action so they know exactly what they can do to help or support you – which means not asking for them for “help” or “support.” That’s too vague. Be specific. Ask them to donate $50 towards a specific campaign. Ask them to volunteer for an hour. Ask them to retweet your event invitation to their followers.

Empower them to help you on their own time and in their own ways. Give them downloads and checklists they can use at home, work, or in their community to advance your cause in their own small way (it will feel big to them). Give them pass-along content like short videos and sample email text that they can share with their friends.

Give your fans the personal touch by encouraging them to connect with you in lots of different ways. When they mention you on Twitter, comment on a Facebook update, or reply to your email newsletter, respond with a thanks or some other kind of encouragement.

Integrate your real-time communications channels into your website, for example, by using Twitter or Facebook widgets or RSS feeds that bring the live conversation to your site. It reinforces for your website visitors that you are “here and now” with your fans if they can see that ongoing conversation.

You Never Know Who’ll Come Clicking

You never know who will stop by your website, so be prepared. Answer questions for strangers. Tell stories to friends. Make it easy for fans to interact with you.

And what about that good ol’ mission statement? If it’s a paragraph full of jargon or otherwise meaningless words to most website visitors, bury it on your About Us page. If it’s short, in plain English, and meaningful to your next door neighbor and your next door neighbor’s mom, then you can put it on your home page. But only after you’ve made room for those answers, stories, and interactions.

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I’m in the middle of developing a marketing strategy, including a website revamp, for a local food bank. As part of any strategy process, I like to take a look at what other similar organizations are doing, so I’ve perused the websites of dozens of small food banks across the U.S.

What food banks do is really not that complicated from a communications perspective: one group of people works to get food to another group of people. The best food bank websites keep it that simple!

My Favorite Food Bank Websites Lead with Simple Stories and Ways to Help

On these websites, you’ll see lots of volunteers who are collecting, sorting, preparing and delivering food. Or you’ll see grateful clients receiving the food. The website navigation is very action-oriented (e.g. donate, volunteer, get food).

Food Gatherers in Michigan does a nice job with this approach to their website, focusing on volunteers with their imagery. You see “Need Food” and “Donate” in several places.

The Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano in California does a nice job too, but with imagery of their clients. They do include some stats on the home page, but in a clear, simple way.

Beware of Too Many Stats, Generalities, and Events

Of course, not every food bank takes this approach.

I also saw several websites that were more focused on public education and programs. They try to make the case for support by reciting a bunch of statistics and describing the problem in that generic  nonprofit language like “The problem of hunger in our community is far greater than most people realize. Now, more than ever, your help is needed.”  Blah, blah, blah. If any nonprofit down the street could use the same language by replacing just one word, what you are saying is too generic.

They also use a lot of jargon and programmatic language on their home pages and in their site navigation like The Growth of Food Insecurity, Raising Awareness about Hunger, Childhood Hunger Programs. This kind of language speaks more to those who work in nutrition or social services than to the people who are most likely to need assistance or to volunteer. I’d much rather see a menu item called “Food for Children” than “Childhood Hunger Programs.”

I also saw quite a few food bank website home pages that were dominated, if not overwhelmed, by event marketing. It’s wonderful that food banks have so many different national partners who want to help them, but when a local group’s website home page is essentially taken over by logos for the USPS Letter Carriers Food Drive, The Biggest Loser Pound for Pound Challenge, and their own local food drives, it’s easy for site visitors to lose the emotional connection with the cause. Promote these partnerships, but not to the exclusion of your core messages.

What I’m Recommending to My Client

I’ll recommend to my food bank client that their website keep it simple with a few stories, while centering on the actions we want people to take.

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When Claire Meyerhoff and I talk about good storytelling, we often talk about honing in on the quirks – those little details that make a story memorable. So I smiled ear to ear when William Neuheisel, communications manager at DC Central Kitchen, talked about how their communications personality is a little quirky.

In this latest interview in our series on Junction C: Where Creating and Curating Meet Content and Conversation, William covers a lot of ground:

• How his small staff manages communications for an organization that’s always changing and trying new things
• How often they strive to add content to their website, Facebook, and Twitter
• How program staff are empowered to represent the organization
• The value of having a quirky organizational personality — and the time when even William thought they may have crossed the line

P.S. To learn more, join us for these webinars:

May 18: Taming Your Editorial Calendar and Content Creation Process

May 25: Creating Awesome Content: Ideas for Nonprofit Writers

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.

ASPCApro’s blog is one of my favorite nonprofit examples because it’s so friendly, useful, and timely. That’s why I was really excited to talk with Pune Dracker (rhymes with Moonraker), Director of Content and Editorial Services (she manages the blog and social media), and Valerie Sheppard, Director of E-Learning (she manages the e-newsletter) for ASPCA Pro. You are probably familiar with the ASPCA as one of the largest organizations fighting animal cruelty, but you may not know about ASPCA Professional, which is specifically for animal sheltering staff and volunteers.

Here’s my interview with Pune and Valerie, where they discuss how decisions about content are made, how they use editorial calendars and editorial meetings, and how they repurpose content. They also discuss how they leave room for ideas from their community and are encouraging more community-generated content.

Here are some examples of the Wordless Wednesday blog posts mentioned in the video.

Pune followed up our interview with some additional details and advice  . . .

Using Google Docs as an Editorial Calendar

“We have a separate one for each month; it’s an integrated schedule that includes all our communications channels—website, blog, Facebook, community site, newsletter, Twitter & internal communications. Info to be filled in includes author, editor, person posting, date posted and (for Facebook) time posted. I also added a notes column where we fill in when/how we promoted each article/piece—i.e. posted on an organization’s Facebook wall or left a comment on a blog we linked to.

This system allows us to be on top of our efforts to cross-pollinate content. We’re good at sending out consistent messages on all our channels, but we’re also able to see if there are additional opportunities—i.e. a new article on cat caging may be going up on our ASPCApro.org website in three weeks—can we plan a blog post on a related topic around that time so we can link to the article in that post—and vice versa.

I’m old school, so I also have a good old wipe-off board with a 60-day calendar just for the blog schedule in my office. I can get a better picture visually of what’s coming up and see if we’re doing too much/not enough of a particular content category and switch around accordingly. It’s also instant accountability—anyone can see the calendar in my office, so it’s a public reminder to keep on top of content development!”

Do as Much as You Can Ahead of Time

“This allows us the luxury of flexibility to switch around posts if we need to—i.e. if you don’t have that last photo you were counting on for a post, or if someone isn’t able to make a deadline in an emergency. And it also means I’m pretty much always able to say yes to last-minute requests for content creation. For example, we have a monthly Q&A on our blog featuring an ASPCA expert. I mapped out who’ll be featured when for the whole year, so I can do these pieces ahead of time. And if you can have some “evergreen” content in the can, ready to go if something falls through at the last minute, you’re so golden.”

Managing Five Blog Posts a Week

“For the blog, we publish five days a week, and I pretty much know the author and/topic for all blogs for the next two months. Anything more than that, you’re sort of defeating the purpose of a blog. Every month I check in with my weekly bloggers and ask if they’ll be out on business/vacation in the next month and need a day off. This way, we can find new content or switch our dates up. The idea is to have a good basic structure in place so you can play around and be flexible—and most importantly, be truly ‘bloggy.’”

Repurpose Like Crazy

“With a little tweaking, you can turn an article for your website into a blog . . .or a newsletter article . . . or a Facebook status! I’ve even transcribed people’s quotes from some video clips we couldn’t use for technical reasons into a blog. You may be thinking, “Oh, people are gonna be sick of reading the same thing again,” but honestly, they’re probably not reading your blog and your newsletter and your Facebook and your website—and if they are (and aren’t on your staff!), you should give them a medal, or at least tap them for a focus group—they can probably tell you a lot about how you’re communicating with the public! Repurposing is also working smart—you’re getting maximum reach for minimal effort. Let your content do double, triple, quadruple duty.”

Thanks for Pune and Valerie for the behind-the-scenes look!

This is the first in a series of interviews on what I call Junction C: Where Creating and Curating Meet Content and Conversation.

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Online fundraising will be a huge part of the conferences I’m attending this week. Just in time, Convio has released the latest update from its Online Marketing Nonprofit Benchmark Index Study.  The report analyzes a variety of data (from fundraising to email files to web visits) from approximately 600 Convio clients who have collectively raised more than $1.15 billion in 2010.

Here are a few highlights:

Online fundraising continues to grow. Overall, 79% of organizations included in the report raised more in 2010 than 2009, while 21% saw declines in their online fundraising. All but three verticals (Association & membership, Public Broadcasting Stations, and Team Events) had a growth rate greater than 10%.

Advocacy continues to play an important role. Total number of advocates on file increased by 20%, and 6.4% of advocates on file were also donors, up from 5.9% in 2009.

An increase in gift count and average gift size primarily drove fundraising gains. Of those that grew fundraising in 2010, 88% saw an increase in the number of gifts and the average gift size grew more than $8 in 2010. This indicates more people are moving online to give even if inspired through other channels.

Email files continued to grow strongly.  The median total email file grew 22% to 48,700 constituents. The increase in people engaging online means organizations need to ensure their communications and fundraising asks match the channel preferences for their constituents if they hope to maximize the value of each relationship.

Get the full report at www.convio.com/2011benchmark.

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Nothing seems to elicit deeper sighs from the small nonprofits I talk to these days then how to best use social media. They know they need to “be there” and they understand the basics. But they are often troubled by the lack of strategy, and the lack of control. What staff, volunteers, and clients might say about the nonprofit on their own personal profiles (let alone the nonprofit’s official page) seems to be a particularly troublesome question.

To deal with this fear in particular, I’m sharing a few tips below. Our next two Nonprofit Marketing Guide webinars will also help: Social Media Fear Factor: Getting Over What’s Holding You Back on Wednesday (02/16/11) and Creating a Social Media Policy for Your Nonprofit next Thursday (02/24/11).

The worry goes something like this: We are afraid of what people associated with us (staff, volunteers, clients) will say on their own profiles. What if they get the facts wrong, or share something inappropriate? What if they make us look bad?

Here what I recommend . . .

First, talk openly and honestly about your concerns as a staff. Share very specific examples of what you think is good and bad, whether real or worst-case-scenario. Simply airing some of these worries and having some devil’s advocate conversations about what might happen and what’s an appropriate response will help you see where you have some agreement and where you need to talk further.

Second, talk about “personal” versus “private.” If there are taboo topics or legal privacy issues, spell that out very clearly for people. Remember, “personal” and “private” are not the same thing anymore, and your age and experience with social media are likely to have a lot of impact on how you feel about those differences. Don’t assume that everyone shares the same level of comfort about sharing personal information, and don’t force your personal definition of “private” on others without being very specific about what you mean. It’s important to embrace a personal approach to social media, while protecting privacy.

Third, sketch out a social media policy. I advocate finding the balance between responsibility as an employee/volunteer and freedom as an individual. During the webinar next week, I’ll give you examples of very restrictive policies (“talk about this and you are fired”) and more lenient guidance (“Here’s what we prefer you do.”) Also keep in mind that the law on what you can expect of your employees is still lagging behind the technology.

Just last week the National Labor Relations Board settled a case with a company that had fired an employee for complaining online about the company and her boss. The NLRB ruled that employee’s negative comments were protected speech under federal labor laws. Under the settlement, the company is changing its blogging and Internet policy, which had barred workers from disparaging the company or its supervisors. The company also will revise another policy that prohibited employees from depicting the company in any way over the Internet without permission.

I suspect a lot of organizations will need to amend their restrictive social media policies after this case. There also seem to be dozens of cases of teachers being fired for Facebook posts of all kinds. As those lawsuits are settled, we’ll get more guidance.

Finally, remember that you can’t control others, but you can control your response. While you can do your best to coach people to say and do as you’d like, ultimately you don’t control anyone. What you do control is your response. So if you are really worried, spend some time coming up with your responses to the most likely inappropriate or unfavorable comments others would make.

The reality is that most of what you’ll find online about nonprofits is positive or neutral. Investing more time in how to encourage those kinds of comments will ultimately be more worthwhile for your nonprofit. But if you need to get over this fear first, try these steps. If you want more help, join us for the webinars.

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Network for Good just released a new online giving study that provides all kinds of good ideas for increasing the amount of money you can raise online. It’s not about coming up with gimmicks; it’s about creating connections and building relationships with your donors.

Here’s one of the central lessons from this study of over $381 million in online giving, including 3.6 million gifts to 66,470 different nonprofits between 2003 and 2009:  Even small upgrades to the donor experience make a measurable difference in online giving. What might some of those small upgrades be?

Be on the donation page with your donors! The study shows that loyalty (i.e. repeat giving) is 66.7% lower for donors acquired through generic donation pages than for donors who give via charity-branded giving pages. In other words, the donation page really does need to look like a part of your website (or at least be very consistent with your overall branding) and not like some generic credit card page you’d find anywhere.

Invest in your website. Social media is not coming to the rescue; you need to spend resources in developing your own website. Donors who gave via the charity’s website gave a bigger first gift and continued to give more over time than donors who gave through other charity portals (e.g. GuideStar or CharityNavigator) or social media (e.g. Facebook Causes).

Offer automated monthly giving. About 1 in 10 donors through Network for Good’s system are giving automated regular gifts, with monthly giving as the most popular frequency. Always offer your donors this option, and provide a compelling reason why a monthly gift is especially important to achieving your goals.

Point your giving portal and social media profiles back to your website. While giving through charity portals and social media isn’t as strong as direct giving through your website, it can still be a significant “first date” in your relationship with donors because they allow you to capture those “impulse givers.” To increase the likelihood of that second date, make sure that you keep your various profiles on other websites up to date and that you do what you can (and it varies by site) to encourage people to click over to your website. For example, in your profile box on your Facebook page and Twitter feed, include a link to your website.

If nothing else, email an ask the last few days of December. This is one of those stats that’s tough-to-believe, but true: Of all the gifts Network for Good processes over the course of the year, 22% comes in on the last two days of December. Obviously, if you aren’t already communicating with your supporters regularly via email, then sending a last-minute appeal on December 30 isn’t going to produce the same kind of results as it would for an organization with a more well-established year-round marketing and fundraising strategy, but c’mon, it’s worth a shot.

Need Some Help with This Stuff?

If you are still trying to get your online fundraising in gear, join me over at Charity How To on Tuesday, December 14 at 1:00 pm ET (10:00 am PT) for Online Fundraising Fundamentals: Tools and Strategies for Success. The webinar includes several bonuses that will come in handy:

• Online Fundraising Cheat Sheet – The critical must-knows and must-dos, all in a simple two-page guide.
• Website Home Page Checklist
• Website Donate Now Page Checklist
• Email Fundraising Checklist
• Online Donor Follow-up Checklist

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.