This blog is all about do-it-yourself nonprofit communications and marketing. I love helping small and medium-sized nonprofits communicate more effectively with their members, donors, volunteers and other supporters, so that together, we can all make the world a better place. I do that as a blogger, trainer, speaker, coach and consultant.
I believe that even the smallest nonprofit staffs with the most modest budgets can achieve tremendous results through savvy marketing and communications. I hope this blog and my online marketing training and other resources encourage you to do just that, while helping you grow personally as a nonprofit marketer and communications professional.
These results mimic last year’s, and in the comments on last year’s post, a few people suggested that the fact that the donations were processed by Network for Good may have been part of the problem, because Network for Good may not be the nonprofit’s preferred way to process online donations or because the Network for Good system is too cumbersome for some nonprofits.
I don’t know if the same issue will come up when discussing this year’s experiment, but I do know this: Whether you prefer to work with Network for Good for your online payment processing or not is a moot point. Whether you’ve even heard of Network for Good or not is moot.
But even if none of this were true, I would give you the exact same advice, because you as a nonprofit manager don’t get to make all the decisions about how people donate online to your cause.
You can certainly guide them down your preferred path, which may be a “Donate” button on your website connected to some other processing system. But if a donor wants to support your cause through Facebook Causes, Guidestar, CharityNavigator, Change.org, Capital One’s Giving Site (which I used for my experiment), or through Network for Good itself, then Network for Good is processing that donation for your donor and for you.
Some of you are wondering who and what the heck this Network for Good is. It’s a nonprofit itself, founded by AOL, Cisco, Time Warner Foundation, and Yahoo! to make it easier for nonprofits to fundraise online and for individuals to support the many causes they care about. If you file a 990, you are in their system, because the IRS sends your 990 to GuideStar, and GuideStar shares the resulting database with Network for Good. They’ve distributed over $370 million in online donations to more than 50,000 different nonprofit organizations. In January of this year alone, they collected $398,000 dollars for charities per day.
Bottom line: No matter how big or how small your organization may be, some of your donors will contribute to you via Network for Good.
Here is what Katya Andresen says Network for Good is doing to make information about these donations available and accessible to you:
“Real-time reporting is accessible for organizations that receive donations through our site or our partner sites where they can view donor details (they can also export that information). A staff member can elect to get an email notification with a daily summary of donations made to the organization.
Nonprofits can elect to have payments deposited by EFT. Otherwise a check is mailed, which includes an insert with details about the payment, how to find donor information for acknowledgements, etc. In addition, we have a check website at networkforgoodcheck.org dedicated to explaining how donations are processed and where charities can find more information.
Lastly, we have free training and tips on how to communicate with donors at fundraising123.org.”
You should work with Network for Good to turn these one-time donors into life-long supporters.
1. Make sure your profile in GuideStar is correct.You can update your profile here. That’s where Network for Good gets your mailing address and it’s what donors see too. Some organizations, especially those with chapters, may be listed in GuideStar under several different names. Make sure your main listing has “headquarters” or “national office” or something like that in the listing.
2. Sign up to get the daily email notification of any donations received for your organization by Network for Good. Sign up here.
3. Send a thank-you note to the donor within a week. Do not wait until you actually get the money from Network for Good!I made my donations on December 9, but because Network for Good only sends the donations to nonprofits once a month, the nonprofits didn’t get the donation until January 15. Now, I know how this system works, but most donors won’t. They’ll think that extra time is you not being responsive. And since you can get the data from Network for Good daily, it really is up to you to stay on top of it. (FYI, donations made through Network for Good are non-refundable in all but a few rare cases, so odds are extremely high that you will get the money. No need to wait to send the thank-you.)
Network for Good does send an automated email on your behalf immediately after the donation, so the donor knows the transaction was successful. It says “Thank You for Your Support” on it, but it’s really just a receipt. It’s up to you to send a genuine thank-you from your organization.
4. Add your new donor to your e-newsletter mailing list. Donors can decide whether to share their contact information with you or not. If they share an email address, put them on your email newsletter list. This person has already expressed support for your work through the donation, so it’s a pretty safe bet that they want to hear from you about the good work you are doing with their money. Communications with first-time donors is what turns them into second-time donors. They can always unsubscribe later if they want.
Of the 22 national organizations I gave to in this experiment last year and this year, only one put me on their email newsletter list (way to go St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital!).
5. Ask for another donation. After thanking your donor and communicating with him or her about the results you are producing, ask for another gift. Treat this person like any other donor. With the exception of some soft asks in the St. Judes’ email newsletter, none of the 22 organizations I’ve donated to through this experiment has asked for another gift.This is even more mind-boggling to me than the lack of thank-you notes!
Next week I’ll share some tips on writing a really good thank-you letter.
P.S. Here’s what’s coming up on our webinar schedule . . .
Last week I had the opportunity to chat with Politico’s managing editor, Bill Nichols, over a dinner hosted by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. (I was there to teach local and state school choice advocates how to develop nonprofit marketing strategies.)
Bill gave a fascinating presentation about the start-up of Politico, emphasizing many of the qualities that have turned it into one of the most popular and influential sources of national political news in just a couple of years.
Though the scale is obviously different, I see many parallels between Politico’s model and what I advocate that nonprofits do: become your own media mogul (or mini media mogul).
Define your niche. Decide what you want to be known for and good at. Politico focuses on Congress, lobbying, and the White House. They don’t cover state or local news or anything else happening in DC. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. Be selective.
Hire and mentor smart people. Politico was launched by a handful of veterans who had been covering the national political scene for decades and were already very well-respected. But they also hired some great young journalists. The energy and Web 2.0 smarts of the younger staff combined with the savvy and experience of the veterans creates a powerful team. Never underestimate the value of your really good and really smart staff members, no matter how young or old they are.
Be transparent. Politico wants to be a trusted, non-partisan source of national political news, which strangely enough is no longer assumed for a media outlet. That means they need to be super-transparent, especially when they make mistakes. Bill described the day they had to retract a story as one of the worst of his life, but admitting the errors and being completely honest about how they happened was far more important than saving face. In today’s world, being transparent IS saving face. Hold integrity and truth in the highest esteem, and admit right away when you screw up.
Be willing to experiment. Politico’s website is its hub, but they also produce a profitable print edition and you’ll frequently see and hear Politico reporters on the radio and TV. Play around with all the different media available to you and find the combinations that work best for your own media empire.
Get out there and update as you go. Bill said stories on the Politico website will often be updated multiple times during the day. What starts out as just a few lines will grow into several paragraphs, then pages. You don’t have to wait until you have all of the details to start conversations with your supporters. That’s the beauty of the web and social media in particular.
Claire Meyerhoff and I are planning to create a series of guides and webinars on how to become your own media mogul in 2010. Stay tuned!
A couple of weeks ago, I noticed Beth Ann Spiegel’s status update on Facebook:
“Beth Ann Spiegel needs your help finding hip songs (rock/alternative/punk/indie/folk/bluegrass/reggae, etc) related to disability/ability, respect, achievement, dignity, friendship, etc. –basically a soundtrack for The Arc of Atlantic County — to play on Stockton’s radio station…we’ll be on 91.7 WLFR talking about The Arc and playing songs connected to our work. Thanks for your help, all!!”
Beth Ann is a fund development and communications associate with The Arc of Atlantic County (New Jersey). The Arc is the world’s largest community-based organization of and for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, with more than 780 state and local chapters across the nation, including Beth Ann’s. This sounded like a perfect way to procrastinate on book writing and still help a nonprofit out, so I spent some time scrolling through iTunes and offered some suggestions: Beautiful (Christina Aguilera), Unwritten (Natasha Bedingfield), New Soul (Yael Naim), Everyday (Dave Matthews Band), Waiting (Green Day), and Shine (Collective Soul).
The more time I spent thinking about it, the more I was intrigued by ways that other nonprofits could use this soundtrack concept. How about collecting song suggestions from your supporters, or even iTunes playlists, and then having your fans vote on the best ones? You could use the winning soundtrack during a DJ’d event or get on a local radio show like Beth Ann is doing this afternoon.
Beth Ann explained how this opportunity came about:
“My colleague and I went to a business mixer and met a radio show host, Joe Molineaux, from the local college’s station–he also runs their small business development department. He hosts a radio program called Money, Management, Marketing and Music. He invites people from small businesses and nonprofits to talk about their work for a whole two hours–but must say something about each of the first 3 M’s. Last night he booked us instantly, on the spot, for September 1st. We’ll get to play a selection of music over those two hours that reflects what we do. Absolutely brilliant, and a way to really engage listeners. We’re promoting an October walk-a-thon to the college students through the radio show so we want them to be able to relate to the music and really get what we do. It’s been such fun thinking of songs and helps us consider our work in a different way. Would be a good exercise for any nonprofit, I think.”
Want to hear Beth Ann’s playlist for The Arc live? Tune in today at 4:00 – 6:00 p.m. ET (1:00-3:00 p.m. PT) to 91.7 WLFR or listen online at www.wlfr.fm, the radio station of Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. I’m on my way out to the Charlotte airport in just a few, but I’m going to try to catch some of it on my netbook.
Listen in and let me know what you think by leaving a comment. Or tell us what songs would be on your organization’s playlist. Happy mixing!
In my online marketing workshops, I ask nonprofits to imagine the day when practically every prospective donor checks to see what current donors think about their organization by reading online reviews. Something like 3/4 of people say customer reviews influence their purchasing decisions and it’s not much of a stretch to see how that can morph from reading reviews before you buy a camera to reading reviews before you make a donation. That day far off in the future just got a whole lot closer.
Guidestar is now working with GreatNonprofits to share user comments about charities with each other. Comments posted on one site will appear on the other as well. I did a quick check and the nonprofits that are “most reviewed” and have the “highest ratings” are nearly all local or regional nonprofits, which means that they are actively asking their supporters to write reviews, rather than waiting for it to happen naturally. Smart cookies!
Instead of getting panicky about the idea of negative comments about you being posted there, use this instead as an opportunity to collect stories from your supporters, in their own words, about how fabulous you are.
Here is how you can take advantage of this: Go to the GreatNonprofits Welcome Page for nonprofits and set up your account. This will let you add text, photos, video, etc. to your page. Then email all of your fervent supporters the comment link and ask them to write a little blurb for you.
Project Homeless Connect in San Francisco is the most reviewed nonprofit on the site today and it looks like nearly all of the reviews were written by volunteers. On their website, in the menu, is a link called “Tell Your Story” that goes directly to the GreatNonprofits page. GreatNonprofits also gives you a badge that you can put on your site to collect and promote your reviews, if you want to take it up a notch. You can also use the reviews in other marketing pieces by simply identifying them as “GreatNonprofits.org User Reviews.”
How long will it be before the average donor knows where to go to check for reviews? Still quite awhile, I bet. But why not get out front and use GreatNonprofits and GuideStar to present positive testimonials to prospective donors and to reinforce the great work you are doing with your current supporters?
Keeping up with all the great nonprofit marketing and fundraising blogs is tough. So here’s one more tool to help you find the information you need: Nonprofit Marketing Zone.
I’m working with Katya Andresen and Nancy Schwartz (bloggers I hope you are already reading) and Tony Karrer (the guy behind the technology that makes the site work) to organize the best content from blogs, news sources and other web sites all around nonprofit marketing and fundraising. The goal is to create a place where it’s easy to find current and highly relevant content. And perhaps to stimulate new connections.
You can get a sense of the power of the site by visiting it and clicking a keyword on the left. For example, if you click on Social Media, you find not only the most recent blog posts but the best ones, according to social signals across the network such as:
I hope you’ll check out Nonprofit Marketing Zone and make it a site you come back to often. Let us know what you think about this new service – we only want to do it if you find it helpful!
David Simpson, the chairman of GoldMail, called a few weeks ago asking me to check out his new service. Like most bloggers with more than 10 subscribers, I get a lot of requests like this, most of which I ignore. But this, my nonprofit friends, is one cool tool that I think a lot of you could use to do some amazing marketing.
GoldMail calls itself “voice over visual messaging” – sort of a combination of voicemail and email. It allows you to record your voice over a series of slides that you create within GoldMail using whatever you have available – photos, screenshots, PowerPoint slides, PDFs, etc. You end up with a nice multimedia message that you can link to in an email or embed in your website or blog. You typically need software like Camtasia Studio or PowerPoint plugins like PointeCast, which are much more expensive and have fairly steep learning curves, to produce something like this.
GoldMail lets you create a simple but effective version of the same thing, without requiring a lot of time, money, or technical know-how. After watching a few quick how-to’s, you can create a message in minutes. And it’s only $9.99 per month. It’s perfect for quick, on-the-fly messages, but can also be used for more polished presentations too. You can record up to 10 minutes, but the most effective uses will be much shorter than that, I think.
I used GoldMail today to create a 3-minute tour of the Nonprofit Marketing Guide All-Access Pass. I’ve embedded the file below and I’ll also be sending out the link to it in an email message to my Nonprofit Marketing Tips subscribers. Hit play to see what GoldMail produces, and to go behind-the-scenes with the All-Access Pass:
(Don’t see the viewer or want to see a bigger, full-screen version? Click here instead.)
Here are three creative ways your nonprofit could use GoldMail:
1) Personalized Thank-you Message. Grab a few photos (or even just one really good one!) that show the results that your donor helped bring about. Record a one-minute thank-you message over those slides, using the donor’s name and referring to their gift specifically, and then email the link to them. “Jack, I wanted you to see for yourself what your $200 has made possible . . . take a look at these photos . . . . isn’t this wonderful? Thank you so much, Jack, for making such a difference . . . “ You can also add in pre-recorded sounds, like your clients saying thank-you in their own voices.
2) Weekly Updates to Members, Boards, Committees, Etc. Do you have a core group of people who need regular updates on your activities? Record a weekly GoldMail message for them with the week’s highlights. It’s show and tell!
3) Event Invitations. Spice up your invitation by talking about all the great things you have planned for this year over fun photos from last year’s event.
I hear some of you asking, but isn’t video so much better? Probably. But video is waaaaay harder to pull off than this. This is easy. And yes, I have Camtasia Studio, and I’ve still put off making the “All-Access Pass Tour” above for months, because there are just too many settings in Camtasia to deal with. For me, too many options is just as bad as too few. I’ll say it again: this was easy.
Two quick tips from my experience today:
- Get your slides in the right order and practice a few times before you actually record. The ability to edit your audio recording is pretty limited and if you decide to move slides around, you have to start the audio recording over from scratch. Make sure you have all the slides you want, and you have them in the right order, before you record the audio.
- Turn up your microphone volume within your control panel. Even though I do webinars all the time with my headset and the audio is just fine, it was way too low on my first GoldMail recordings. Crank it up a bit on your computer before you record.
David Simpson says the San Franciso Zoo used GoldMail to create a message about new zoo babies and the email to donors with the GoldMail message outperformed the standard email message by 650%. You can’t argue with those kinds of results. David is interested in exploring how other nonprofits can use GoldMail. How might you use this kind of service? Leave a comment with your ideas.
Wow – yesterday’s post about thank you notes and the lack thereof got the conversation started! Thanks to everyone who took the time to add some thoughts to the debate.
Several people mentioned that the practical realities of nonprofit management mean that getting thank-you notes out promptly, especially when donations come through non-traditional channels for your organization, can be difficult. Many nonprofits are chronically underfunded and understaffed and often under-skilled in the technology that could make things easier. I get it — really. Been there, done that. At the opposite end of the spectrum, a relatively small gift of $25 may not produce more than a shrug from the development office. I get that too, although I’m certainly less sympathetic to that point of view.
But here’s the thing. Think about how much time a typical nonprofit spends on generic “outreach,” like newsletters, with the purpose, at least in part, of generating new supporters. If you are so pressed for time, wouldn’t those precious hours be better spent thanking the people who have taken the next step and given you money, no matter how much or through what method?
Just yesterday, before I wrote the post, I did a webinar on Nonprofit Marketing with Next to No Budget. One of my key points was to focus in on the people who matter most and to get personal with them. I specifically pointed out that saying thank you and doing it well, just by itself, was a major strategy for making your nonprofit stand out in donors’ eyes, because so few nonprofits do it well. If you are going to spend anytime on communications at all, shouldn’t it be with the people who have already demonstrated a commitment to your cause by contributing?
Advice to My Frazzled Nonprofit Friends
Give higher priority to your thank-you notes than to any other piece of communications you work on. The newsletter doesn’t go out, the website doesn’t get updated, your report to your board doesn’t get done, until you have sent some kind of thank-you to your donors. Take control of your work life and make it happen. If you don’t, I can pretty much guarantee that over the long haul, you will remain underfunded and understaffed.
Do what NPR did with my gift. If you get an email address, copy and paste it and shoot out a generic thank-you. This is what they sent me, with “NPR Thanks You!” as the subject line:
Dear Friend:
Thank you for your 2008 contribution to National Public Radio, made through Capital One. Your support helps NPR provide Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation, Car Talk, News & Notes, From the Top and other news and cultural programming to listeners from Alaska to Florida and many countries overseas.
Again, many thanks for your generosity. NPR simply could not do it without you.
Sincerely,
Annie Callaway Davis,
Vice President for Development
(Sent by)
Dayna Taylor
Grants & Contributions Administrator
Granted, I would not hold this up as the best thank-you note ever, but the point is that they sent it, and they sent it promptly. It was the first one I received. I’m not rushing out to put NPR in my estate plans because of it, but this is good enough for me to donate another $25, should they get around to asking me to, and who knows after that. You can do this – anyone can!
Dealing with Donations Through Payment Services
It doesn’t matter whether you like getting gifts through Network for Good (NFG) or any other payment processor or not – you have to deal with it! The donor should get to make the decision about how they donate. You should certainly encourage them to use your preferred channels and to make that super easy, but don’t dis donors who don’t do it your way.
I happen to think that Network for Good is one of the best things to happen to the nonprofit sector in a long time. Yes, I’m friends with Katya Andresen, the COO, but I became friends with her because I admired so much what she was doing at NFG and on nonprofit marketing in general. NFG makes online giving possible for so many nonprofits who couldn’t pull it off on their own and they have also opened up lots of new ways for donors to fund causes they care about online. Look who NFG processes payments for now:
If you hope to use social media to raise money, you are going to have to figure this out, no matter how big or how small your nonprofit is. NFG is trying to make it easier for you. They take care of the emailed tax receipt so the donor knows the transaction was successful, but it’s up to you to make the personal connection with your supporters. And right there in the email you get from NFG when they process a donation for you, they remind you to thank your donors directly. Sure, any system can always be improved, and Katya told me today that she and her staff are keeping track of all of the suggestions in the comments.
About Those Eight Nonprofits that Didn’t Acknowledge My Gift . . .
I just did some research on Guidestar. Only one of the eight is truly a small organization with a very limited budget and staff. The others are huge in comparison – they all have gross reciepts over $1 million. Two fall into the $30-80 million range and three are bringing in more than $100 million. These gifts were made over three months ago. It’s not about doing it in a timely fashion at this point, it’s about doing thank-yous at all. These organizations have the resources to acknowledge small gifts contributed online, if they really wanted to.
Keep the conversation going – leave a comment here or on the other post.
I’ve seen lots of interest from nonprofits in using video to communicate with supporters about their causes, along with an equal amount of trepidation about how to do it. I’m not a video expert, but I know several people who are, so I put out a call over Twitter for some guest posts to share with you. I’m expecting several more, but I’ll share two that have come in some far:
On Tuesday, March 10, at Noon Eastern, the Chronicle of Philanthropy is hosting an online chat on how nonprofits can effectively use video. Even if you can’t attend live, be sure to check out the transcript later.
Here are some additional resources I think you’ll find helpful:
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Yesterday in “10 Donations. 3 Thank-Yous. 7 Failures to Communicate,” I shared the results of my recent giving experiment, where only 3 out of 10 national nonprofits acknowledged my gift with a thank-you.
A couple of weeks ago, I noticed Beth Ann Spiegel’s status update on Facebook:
