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, 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.
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:
“Oh, no! That’s what our
newsletter looks like to a third
of the people on our mailing list?!?”
Don’t be her.
Preview your e-newsletter in
different email programs.
Those new to the world of e-newsletter publishing are often surprised to learn that their email newsletters can look quite different to someone who is using Outlook versus someone using Gmail or Thunderbird, not to mention what it looks like on a smartphone. That’s because email programs (called email clients) process HTML in different ways.
The only way to be sure that your email newsletter template is working well in all the major clients is to actually view it in all of the different programs.
While some email newsletter service providers make this easier than others, it’s not a standard service. But two companies do offer testing programs that will deliver screen shots of your newsletter in various email programs at reasonable prices, even if you don’t use them to send out your newsletter: Mail Chimp’s Inbox Inspector, powered by ReturnPath, (sign up for a free account, then buy three tests for $29) and Campaign Monitor’s Design and Spam Test (sign up for a free account, then pay $5 per test).
It’s well worth paying for the test services every now and then, especially when you make changes to your layout.
If you simply can’t pay, you can do it yourself, but the hassle factor is high. Start by getting free accounts at services like Gmail and Yahoo and installing multiple email programs on your computer (e.g. Outlook, Thunderbird). Beg friends with various ISPs (e.g. AOL, Roadrunner, Comcast) to do screen captures for you. Then run your own tests.
The goal isn’t necessarily to make your newsletter look exactly the same in every program. It’s to make sure that your newsletter is readable in every program and that there aren’t any wacky design shifts that are so distracting that the reader instantly hits delete.
To Run the Test: Set up a free account. Go to Create a Campaign > Inbox Inspector Test. You’ll copy and paste your HTML, and add some other campaign details. Then you’ll pay $29 for 3 tests (nonprofits may get a better deal - I don’t know.). Within one minute, the results started to come in, but they changed after a few minutes, so I’d give it at least 15 minutes before even looking at it.
Campaign Monitor’s Design and Spam Test
To Run the Test: Set up a free account. This email service specializes in serving designers who manage e-newsletters for multiple clients. Just pretend you are your own client. Click on the client name, then create a new campaign (you have to have the campaign ready to go before clicking on the “Run a Design and Spam Test” button). Instead of cutting and pasting your HTML, you have to upload the HTML file. When I got to the section about the mailing list, I stopped and clicked on Design and Spam Testing, and it asked for a $5 payment. Speed was about the same - some results quickly, but not worth looking at until about 15 minutes later.
If you are using another email newsletter provider rather than creating your own HTML, simply login to your account, open a newsletter, go the HTML tab and copy the code. Paste it into a plain text program like Notepad. Then you can copy/paste into these services.
The Results and Pros/Cons of Each System
Plain Text Versions: Both systems convert your HTML to plain text versions for you, although Campaign Monitor’s looked much cleaner than MailChimp’s. Campaign Monitor also showed me the recommended line length on the plain text message, which is nice, so you can add hard-returns if you want.
Spam Filter: My newsletter passed all of the Spam Filter tests in both systems, although there were some non-lethal warnings. For example, apparently the McAfee Security Center spam filter considers these words somewhat spammish: source, way, focus, print, pass, accounts, really, others. It would be crazy to worry about such common words, so I’m not going to. Campaign Monitor said McAfee identified 25 words like this as warnings, where MailChimp said McAfee found 30 words. I guess they must be using different versions of McAfee in their testing.
MailChimp tested against eight different spam filters. Campaign Monitor tested against the same ones, plus the Norton 2008 spam filter, but after several hours, the Norton results aren’t available, so that’s a wash.
Content Assessment
MailChimp analyzes your HTML for you and suggests code fixes. I ran the “clean up HMTL” tool in Dreamweaver before running the tests, but MailChimp still found a few code errors. Fortunately nothing serious — just leaving the # sign off of some of the color codes. My heart did skip a beat when it said it found 47 content errors, however. Turns out they were all spelling errors, which weren’t really mistakes (it didn’t like my name, the way I hyphenated All-Acess Pass, etc.). Campaign Monitor doesn’t offer this service.
Email Client Screen Shots
This is what I really cared about.
MailChimp’s Inbox Inspector
Campaign Monitor’s Design and Spam Test
After about an hour, only half of the screen shots were back in both services, but by that point, they both produced some of the biggies, like Outlook, Gmail, Comcast, and AOL. I had simplified my design quite a bit, although I still use a table with two columns, so I wanted to make sure the text wasn’t flowing or overlapping in any strange ways. Fortunately, everything looked reasonably good across the various platforms, although neither one was able to come up with a screen shot from Yahoo! Mail today.
The screenshots did remind me to set all image borders to zero so a blue box doesn’t appear around them when a link is attached. The blue blox showed up in AOL and Comcast, but not Gmail and Earthlink. I’d rather not have it anywhere, so it’s worth adding the border setting in.
Overall, I like Campaign Monitor’s screen shots better.They let you toggle images on and off when those email clients offer that option to readers, so you get a clear picture of exactly what people are seeing. MailChimp lets you see the same thing, but in a less convenient way - you have to open the preview of images on and the preview of images off. Campaign Monitor also groups the screen shots by web-based email clients, desktop email clients, and mobile clients, which I found much easier to scan, where MailChimp groups them all together. MailChimp does show several clients used in Europe, if that matters to you, that Campaign Monitor doesn’t.
What’s Missing
It would be really nice if these services included screen shots of what your email looks like in different web-based email programs in different web browsers. That’s where you can see some real differences.
Look at the these three screen captures of my newsletter in my Gmail inbox viewed in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome. Though I prefer Firefox as a user, my newsletter looks the worst in this browser. The text at the top is wrapping oddly so that my name and organization are below the logo instead of beside it like in the others. Firefox and Chrome both remove padding within the table, so the columns butt up against each other, where Explorer keeps the nice white space. Chrome doesn’t include the ALT text on the images in the sidebar, so those are just blank boxes, while the others give you some of the text.
None of these differences are earth-shattering for this particular newsletter, but they could make a real difference depending on your layout and how important your pictures are.
In Mozilla Firefox 3.0.5
In Windows Internet Explorer 7
In Google Chrome 1.0.154.36
My Bottom-Line Recommendation
I prefer Campaign Monitor’s service, and it’s the more affordable option too (always a nice result!). If you really want that extra code check or send lots of email to Europe, then I’d take another look at MailChimp. In addition, be sure to preview the HTML file in different web browsers to make sure there aren’t any differences you can’t tolerate. If you pasted your code into Notepad, just open the browser and go to File, then Open to view your HTML - it doesn’t need to be online to be previewed.
P.S. Get more email newsletter tips during tomorrow’s webinar on E-Newsletter Essentials (1/7/09).
Last week, Lindy Dreyer (SocialFish.org) and I hosted a free half-hour webinar called “What’s the Buzz? Find Out Who’s Talking About Your Organization and Issues Online” - or what’s called “social media listening” by the Web 2.0 cool kids.
We talked about why you should be listening to online conversations and how you can use what you hear to improve your nonprofit’s programs and marketing. We also walked through how to set up several easy, free listening tools.
If you missed it, you can watch the recording: What’s the Buzz? (Windows Media Video .wmv)
If a blogger raved about how great your organization is (or ranted about something you did wrong), would you know about it? Who’s starting conversations online about the causes you care about and who’s talking back?
During this free 1/2 hour webinar, Lindy Dreyer (SocialFish.org) and I will show you how to use social media tools to listen to conversations taking place online about your organization and the issues you care about — and to keep track of the online movers and shakers in your field.
You’ll learn why you should be listening to online conversations and how you can use what you hear to improve your nonprofit’s programs and marketing. We’ll also walk you through how to set up several easy, free listening tools, step by step.
P.S. Weekly Webinar Series fans and All-Access Pass Holders take note: We will be using GoToWebinar for this event, not ReadyTalk like usual, so be sure to run the set-up test after you register so you’ll be all ready to go next week. Also, you can listen to the audio through your computer speakers or via the phone (your choice), but the phone option will be a toll call.
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The Webinar Buzz . . .
"The webinar was great. We had a group of people in the room. It has consoliated our thinking on a number of new directions."
How to Get Your
Nonprofit Marketing
Questions Answered
I'll gladly answer your questions (or try to anyway), but I prefer to do so in a public way, so others can benefit from our conversation and join in with their thoughts too. Here are the best ways to ask your questions and get free advice.
Live Office Hours on Fridays - Most Fridays, when I'm not on the road, you can either call in your question to Magic Keys Radio or chat with me live on this blog's homepage. Check the calendar for details.
See Your Q&A on the Blog - I'll post your question and my reply on this blog and/or in my e-newsletter when you submit your question at Ask Kivi.com.
For Webinar Participants Only - Ask a question in advance of the live webinar and see what others are curious about too (coming soon!)
Email Me Directly - Last resort for general questions, and probably the slowest, because I'm putting priority on answering questions in the places above first. Here's the contact form.
For questions about webinars, coaching or consulting, please feel free to email me or to call me at 336-499-5816 anytime and I'll get back to you promptly.
Magic Keys Radio/Podcast
A couple of times per month, Kivi Leroux Miller and Claire Meyerhoff host a live Internet radio show and podcast.
Looking for the 
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.
Last week, Lindy Dreyer (
If a blogger raved about how great your organization is (or ranted about something you did wrong), would you know about it? Who’s starting conversations online about the causes you care about and who’s talking back?
You’ll learn why you should be listening to online conversations and how you can use what you hear to improve your nonprofit’s programs and marketing. We’ll also walk you through how to set up several easy, free listening tools, step by step.
